I am a around 30 years old, and here is something I don’t get: why do we care about the FSF? This is a sincere question that may help keep the discussion on topic.
To me FSF already feels like a relic of a bygone time of CS and free software, and RMS embodies this “ancientness”. All of this is free software that can be forked, and RMS relevance is mostly linked to giving talks if I’m not mistaken. Why is so much focus put on getting the FSF to fire RMS? Why not let them both die down in their own little bubble? Fork the software, and stop attending RMS’s lectures. What am I missing?
You’ve missed the decade when it was really uncertain whether Free Software, or even Open Source, would exist beyond a fringe.
In the 80-90s all “home computers” were entirely proprietary closed-source systems. In the 90s and early 00s, Microsoft was incredibly dominant. Office + IE lock-in + winmodems made it nearly impossible not to use Windows. Competition didn’t matter, was unaffordable, and also proprietary anyway.
Microsoft was unashamedly aggressive, and busy spreading FUD. #1 software company in the world kept saying that exposing source code is dangerous, non-commercial software is made by shady amateurs, DRM is necessary for “trustworthy computing”. They even supported a Business Software Alliance that pretended to be anti-piracy agency, and incited police raids on Linux users under the premise that Linux is a useless junk with no purpose other than to illegally buy computers without paying OEM fees to Microsoft, and hide the real commercial software they must have stolen.
We’ve dodged a massive bullet, but that took a lot of advocacy. RMS/FSF have been influential in starting counter-movements. RMS has been proven right on software freedoms.
They’re irrelevant now because Microsoft has lost that battle, even though Free Software didn’t win.
Azure now running Linux feels surreal. Microsoft literally used to call Linux “cancer”.
FSF is still a high profile organisation in FOSS, in charge of GPL and a few projects, plus they do show up in many places trough their campaigns.
Most importantly, FSF and RMS still having support and people defending them sends a warning signal that the larger community doesn’t take such issues seriously, and it’s a bigger problem than just a one creep.
Sorry but what? You are just listing some of your opinions about FSF. Can someone explain what concrete way FSF is preventing women and minorities from participating in Free Software that can’t just be attributed to the general abysmal representation rate of women and minorities in tech in general?
Azure runs Linux on Hyper-V, so on top of Windows!
I was surprised when I saw that (in VM boot logs) but I guess if there’s a single company where that might make sense it’s Microsoft.
Aside from questions of RMS’s influence, there’s a clear technical reason to pay attention to the governance of the FSF: thousands of projects give them the right to relicense anything that “GPLv2-or-later” or “GPLv3-or-later”.
Incidentally, I think for this reason, it’s the wrong strategic move to simply abandon the FSF. While it’s not the end-all-be-all, the ability to define a putative GPLv4 may come in handy some day, and it would be bad if that power fell into the wrong hands (even worse hands than Stallman’s).
In my opinion, the “or-later” licenses are foolish anyway*. You’re licensing your work under a license that could become literally anything in the future. And as we have seen time and time again, organizations can be captured and even entire cultural movements start working against their original agenda. Say against Stallman what you will, he was always steadfast in his dedication to actual user freedom, like a rock in the surf.
What’s the problem with that? Say for example apple. They took FreeBSD because they could do just that while they could not under GPL. Personally I don’t care for apple and don’t use their products, but what exactly is the problem? They seem to be rather popular even amongst many free software authors. It it so bad that they did their thing?
I think the whole idea of forcing it to be free has more bizarreness to it. I don’t want to be exercising control of stuff I wrote if some company takes it and makes closed source changes for whatever purpose. I shared it. From that point on, it’s not mine anymore, as per definition of sharing.
Sure, and reasonably, protection against usurpation of intelectual property is something I would care. If I write something of value, I would want a company to claim they wrote it themselves. But using it and modifying it… Well I released it, shared it.
It’s a fair question. For the record, I am personally very close to coming to this same conclusion: that the FSF has lost so much credibility it’s probably irredeemable at this point, both for their refusal to condemn RMS’s behavior and for their myopic insistence that license is the thing that matters above all else when it comes to user freedom, which has led to situations like Google Chromium that technically qualifies as free software but has been a tremendous force towards consolidating monopoly power and eroding end-user freedom. All this while condemning projects like Debian just for shipping working wifi drivers.
I think the reason that a lot of people are hesitant to move on is that it feels like admitting defeat and saying that “open source” has won, and that the point of what we do is to make software that’s “more effective” (for whoever controls the software) rather than actually working towards a world that’s better for end users. As far as I’m aware there does not exist any other organized form of resistance. (with the possible exception of the FSFe which does condemn Stallman and just general has much more sensible priorities)
But I think you might be right in that the energy could be better spent building up some kind of post-FSF movement with an explicitly anti-capitalist foundation the likes of which the FSF was never bold enough to claim. A lot has happened since the 1980s, and the free-software-vs-open-source divide has always been sooooo subtle that it’s easy for naive programmers to think they’re the same thing.
On the other hand, I am not putting my own energy towards building such a movement, so for me to criticize what other people choose to put their energy into feels a bit hypocritical.
FWIW the non-free element of wifi drivers that FSF does not approve of is user-uploadable firmware. If the firmware would be stored locally on the wireless adapter and be inaccessible to the end user, the wifi driver would be free from FSF’s standpoint. Same if the functionality would be implemented in hardware. In all cases the question what the card is actually doing would apply in equal measure.
When you get to the low level stuff, the distinction between hardware and software becomes really blurry.
For those of us a bit older, it certainly felt like RMS’s views - and efforts to disseminate them - on free software were pretty important in kick-starting the open-source explosion in the late 90s. Obviously “open source” software has existed since the beginning of time, and was particularly prevalent in certain communities, particularly the original Unix world that sees its continuation in the modern BSD eco-system. However in the 80s and 90s the software that ordinary people were likely to encounter, as the use of and exposure to computing exploded, was all closed-source and commercial - mostly the DOS/Windows ecosystem. RMS’s free software advocacy along with Linux’s use of the GPL was a strong counterpoint to that, and the FSF/GNU project did contribute the libc and dev tools that turned Linux into a usable operating system.
Obviously, none of this forgives the way RMS appears to have behaved or the views he has stated (I’ve not delved very deeply into the accusations because of the ‘ick’ factor, but that certainly doesn’t mean I disbelieve them.) But perhaps it explains a bit why the subject feels important to those of us 40+ years old whereas it may well seem like an irrelevance, albeit a very grim one, to anyone younger.
Technically we are very nearly in a post-FSF/GNU world - we have musl, clang/llvm, many new dev tools, editors, and whole languages and ecosystems. A younger acquaintance on IRC wrote this evening, “.. and to be honest I think given that the FSF seems to be largely a cult of personality around RMS, it’s time to let it die” .. and while my initial reaction was to bristle a bit, I can’t help thinking he’s right. Such a shame its legacy is going to be tainted by one man and his enablers :(
Just wow. This bald statement is a testament to the past success of the FSF, that someone in their 30s can take the current success of free software for granted. (Not to imply that they did it all single-handedly, but you cannot deny the role that they played.)
The current success of Libre Software may stem from the (undeniable) work the FSF did, but it is no longer driven by the FSF. I acknowledge that the FSF did extremely important things from its founding until circa the early 2000s, but since then it has been a sad downhill decline towards irrelevance. Since #MeToo and what came out about RMS and his friends around then, it has also been a decline into active harm to the Libre Software community.
We have the SFC to advocate for software freedom. RYF has been incredibly infuriating for those of us who want to see the Libre Hardware movement flourish; it took two years to certify the Talos II board, and by the time it was certified it had lost most of its market relevance. They are putting resources into a campaign to get non-technical users to use GnuPG for their email without fixing any of its user experience issues - and they don’t even recommend cycling keys regularly, only suggesting to do it in the event of compromise. Taking the cake is their insistence on confusingly calling Thunderbird “Icedove” as a primary name and suggesting Thunderbird is somehow an alternative name.
I appreciate the FSF’s steadfast dedication to purity, but as Python famously encodes into this, practicality beats purity. I stand against FSF’s requirement that libre operating systems necessarily must not allow users the option to install firmware as it prevents users from learning about the benefits of Libre Software without sacrificing Wi-Fi and in many cases graphics acceleration. I don’t think it’s right that the hardware requires firmware, but this is the world we live in, and if Bash can run on the Mac OS and the LGPL can exist, then users should have a freedom to use the hardware they are stuck with. This is why Adélie’s installer asks the user to make the choice themselves.
Or, to make the counterpoint seen elsewhere in this thread, I can boot my Linux kernel system into a BSD-2-Clause OpenRC built against MIT musl libc and log in to my account to start using my Zsh shell session using either toybox or chimerautils for the POSIX command set, all built with NCSA/Apache-2.0 LLVM and Clang. The GNU Operating System plays no part in it.
And to be clear, I disagree with exactly none of your points. Nonetheless, I am old enough to remember when the goals of the FSF seemed utopian, to the point of being unmoored from reality. Somewhere along the line the world surpassed what they set out to do. (Perhaps they were unready for that.)
There were also a strong culture for sharing software, both free and unfree, on BBS-es, on copyparties, in the demoscene, in person and then on the internet, completely independent of the FSF. I feel that you might be giving them a bit too much credit. The culture for sharing code was already there.
Someone has to file amicus curiae briefs in the Federal appeals circuit courts and SCOTUS. The FSF (and others, like OSI) do that for cases related to software copyright. My understanding is that the FSF and related organizations are to FOSS what the ACLU and SPLC are to civil rights.
This goes beyond code, where you need humans to show up and argue with each other in person or in writing what words mean or how they should be interpreted. But ironically, that’s not the kind of belligerently ignorant trolling highlighted in this report.
This seems like something that could be verified empirically. Has anyone gathered data on how many briefs have come from each organization? I always think of the EFF when it comes to copyright cases. The FSF doesn’t even come to mind unless it’s specifically about the GPL.
Someone has to file amicus curiae briefs in the Federal appeals circuit courts and SCOTUS. The FSF (and others, like OSI) do that for cases related to software copyright.
That’s just an aphorism, it’s not some kind of objective statement of truth. It’s a self-fulfilling aphorism, you just need confirmation bias to apply it to the current era.
I didn’t include a rationalization for the aphorism; instead, I’ve used it to make a point. In other words, it’s not about the aphorism itself, but about the tendency to forget that times change. For example, if the entire population were to get vaccinated, future generations might doubt the necessity of vaccines because there would be no pathogens for the vaccines to combat (assuming vaccines work as inteded).
For better or worse FSF hosts some resources, technical and social, in use by the GNU project. And the latter has projects that are very important to keep going.
In my mind, the clearest case for the FSF is the definition of free software as a liberty, defined by the four freedoms (and by extension the freedom to help someone non-technical, by for example fixing a bug in some software upstream has abandoned).
As well as the argument that extends from it in favour of democracy; Free voting software, Free policing software, Free medical software, Free research and educational software and so on.
I am glad that this question is top voted and I applaud its neutral tone.
Disclamer: I’ve been an open source user for a quarter of a century and still run Linux on all my computers.
I like free software because it allows me to trust it more. The whole process allows for more transparency and even for people to fork the code and modify it. It feels safer and it lenda itself for software that is more focus on usefulness rather than all sorts of gimmicks to achieve marketing goals. Although there is a fair share of such gimmicks in the free software world too.
I would not only agree with your skepticism, I will also state that I personally already had a similar opinion to yours back in the mid 2000s. There was already a relic feeling to it and it already smelled of gatekeeping and silly void elitism.
So back in the day I red about the famous GPL licenses and why they were important (which they were) but then headed up to the web and it was all about “should this or that project be included in the gnu project?” Taken as a political matter. gatekeeping. Should we allow this guy to play with the cool kids? Do we let him speak in the mailing lists or do we moderate him to complete silence?
It always ringed wrong to me. It’s not so much about whatever policy they follow, but rather positioning themselves as some sorts of oficial leaders of free software, when the whole point should be allegedly that we don’t need to be subjected to such authority.
IIRC, netcat’s man page does take a jab at the whole thing saying free software licenses are non sense.
Personally it annoys me when I hack together a quick script and share it … it always comes some party pooper with some boring blab about which license I should release it under.
The FSF and RMS did play a central rolle in free software, which Stalman defining much of what it is. But we should leave it at that. At this point, things like GitHub, package registries, etc. are arguably of comparable if not even greater importance.
I do find this pattern in many free software projects that get popular and large. Often times some power hungry self-important group of people decides they should run the thing officially and start creating all this power structure, while hackers are under the impression that it was just a bunch of people hacking.
It baffles me how inclined people can be to defend an authoritative figure who consistently behaves in obnoxious ways. As if acknowledging the person they revere for technical contributions could be wicked in some way at the same time hurts their egos too much.
Stallman clearly has some kind of a disorder. If he was yet another sexual harasser or paedophile, I guess he wouldn’t be as open about it. He seems to genuinely believe in what he has been consistently repeating for decades, and with the massive feedback about his stances he received over the years there are only two possible answers:
He knows full well what he is doing and saying is obnoxious and likely criminal, and that people who live according to his views are hurting people - he doesn’t care, though, and that would make him an even more repulsive individual.
Despite all of this he still does not understand what is wrong with all the activities he supports (and apparently commits, too) which would indicate he is a deeply disturbed person, likely with some serious disorders.
That’s the thing I find the most obnoxious: people - and particularly people in the open source world - should be more than ready to tear down their idols if necessary. It’s only healthier for the rest of the community and movement. Defending what is clearly bad behavior from a leader in the community taints the community as a whole. And I can’t think of anything worse to defend than pedophilia and the ownership/distribution of CSAM.
One can appreciate Stallman’s huge contribution to open source - and the world in general, considering how much technological advance was made possible by his contributions - without having to paper over this.
Why would it be a bad thing to be against criminalizing possession of any digital material regardless of its nature?
I consider my encrypted personal computers extensions of my mind. I would very much object to anybody wading through them for any reason.
Eventually people are going to have such devices implanted. Would you consent to surveillance of your auxiliary secondary brain? Would you respect that some people would not consent?
Existence of CSAM is widely abused to implement censorship and snooping. Polemizing with the notion that merely possessing material classified as CSAM is bad in itself is a pretty good idea if you do not want the snooping imposed on people.
Did you know that currently a lot of hentai manga classifies as CSAM? Despite it being a drawn fantasy?
Did you know that underage people often sext? Either with their current partners or to hook up.
Sorry, but they are not. They are partially acknowledged and then dimissed as irrelevant “because some people suffer”.
I believe it’s legitimate to take the stance that it’s better to allow some amount of crime in order to preserve more freedom. Mass snooping is not acceptable tradeoff for me. Especially when the definition of the illegal material is nonsensically broad.
Making synthetic material explicitly legal to hold and making it possible to report distribution of CSAM material to authorities would probably work much better than complete ban. But that’s less business for organizations that make money off detecting CSAM.
This discussion is practically not even acknowledged. Authors imply that RMS is all for distribution of CSAM where he writes basically “dude, you should avoid material with actual kids and probably don’t tell anyone or they’ll lynch you” which is totally in line with what most liberals would tell their acquaintances to do when asked like that in private.
And last but not least, I’ll add some light whataboutism… How come we care about mental health of abuse victims here but then force them to bear rapist kids? How came we don’t care about millions of kids with disorders caused by Instagram enough to take a meaningful action? How came we don’t care about poor families where women (and kids) have to stay with abusive men they depend on financially due to paygap and similar factors?
What makes this particular issue so important that we are ready to abandom freedom of our communications and sovereignty over our systems?
You create a non-profit organization A-foundation which is concerned with advocating for A. The head of A-foundation decides to also advocate for B. Now out of the people who support A, you have divided them into two groups, the group A+B and the group A-B. The group A-B is now not going to support A-foundation. Wouldn’t it be better for A if A-foundation chose leaders who publicly advocate only for A, without taking a public position on controversial issues B, C, D, etc?
The thing is, if you argue against mass surveillance by undermining the notion that child abuse is bad, and questioning whether CSAM should really be illegal - you’ve already lost the case.
Plus, you’re inviting shady characters, criminals and sex offenders to side with you, which I wouldn’t personally want to happen. It’s not the kind of allies I would like to have, especially when righteously advocating for principal, basic freedoms and not being subject to surveillance.
Point is, as a moderately liberal / libertarian myself, I think we should rather actively seek ways to protect vulnerable individuals from abuse (such as rape, molesting and non-sexual violence) with as minimal impact on personal freedoms as possible. It’s definitely better to to incriminate and charge those responsible for creation and distribution of disturbing content such as CSAM, than to put everyone under surveillance to make sure nobody holds any copies.
That being said, if you get caught with such materials it should trigger investigation, since if you came into possession of such materials you must have been somehow involved - if not as a creator or distributor, then as an individual in the know. And most likely someone did get hurt in the process.
And from my libertarian view, nobody is free to hurt others against their will just because they could argue it’s their freedom. Your freedom ends where others freedoms and rights begin. You cannot deter intruders with nuclear warheads, and likewise freedom of speech should not protect rapists, human traffickers or child abusers.
Personally, I feel the consequences of the solutions greatly outweigh the benefits. Governments cannot be trusted with respecting the privacy of the general population or making nuanced decisions like differentiating between two teenagers sharing photos and things that are absolutely wrong on every moral and ethical level.
On a related note…
There are many stories that socially not considered harmful but also objectively violate the “18+ only” rule that is applied like a shotgun to a nail all over the internet. That rule does not reflect cultural norms and as an author, I deeply disagree with the scope of censorship this has and continues to cause.
That said, my opinion isn’t the only one. I admit I may be on the wrong side of the line here. It’s not out of ignorance. I have seen both sides of this issue. I’ve had to enforce this rule and I know far more about cptsd than I want to.
It baffles me how inclined people can be to defend an authoritative figure who consistently behaves in obnoxious ways. As if acknowledging the person they revere for technical contributions could be wicked in some way at the same time hurts their egos too much.
It’s often important for authoritative figures to behave in obnoxious ways, because the mass of people judging what is obnoxious are either wrong, or are applying their standards inconsistently because they don’t like what that figure is doing. I think that is exactly what is happening to Stallman.
It matters if one set of obnoxious behaviors works against the goals supported by other sets of obnoxious behaviors. “Actually, it’s GNU/Linux” is not the same as toenail mukbang.
While I strongly support this report and shared it on other networks, I flagged it as off-topic as it doesn’t relate to “computing”. It already sparked more bad faith than what I was expecting to see from this community.
Discussion of FSF’s governance is absolutely on-topic for this forum, IMO.
Ultimately, I think the whole report is less about condemning one man (which the report explicitly does) and more about the FSF moving past its problematic leadership and hopefully becoming relevant again.
That’s a fair point. I just don’t think we’ll be able to move past Stallman apologists and have an honest discussion about the FSF, even if we remove the person tag and try to recenter the debate.
So many analogues to the FSF have been founded specifically to enable ignoring RMS, and thriving for that reason, that I don’t think the relevance of the FSF-per-se is even that important any more.
This isn’t really about FSF’s governance though, it’s about the behaviour of someone governing FSF. Would Hans Reiser’s murdering of his wife be on topic at the time he was project lead on ReiserFS?
Topicality: … Some rules of thumb for great stories to submit: Will this improve the reader’s next program? Will it deepen their understanding of their last program? Will it be more interesting in five or ten years?
The Reiser case seems to me to be a “no” on all three questions, although I acknowledge that alone doesn’t necessarily mean it was off-topic.
I disagree on at least 2 here: Knowing that the core maintainer of a major filesystem is in jail with a chance to stay there for decades is useful info when picking the FS for my next project and it certainly had repercussions 10 years later (reiserFS isn’t relevant anymore). Of course a lot of things happened in addition to that, but the stability of its leadership was certainly an issue in its decline.
I would agree that following Reisers court case would not be on subject here, but I would find the fact that there’s something going on around Reiser while he was still in that leadership position - I’d see this definitely in scope for me as a software developer, as long as the source is reputable and factual.
Discussion of FSF’s governance is absolutely on-topic for this forum, IMO.
I don’t have a stake in this forum, but such discussions should absolutely be off-topic for a technical forum, especially if it involves cancelling people based on politics. This is mostly because the material is triggering, regardless of your opinions about it, and I don’t see a way to filter such crap out.
Furthermore, as an opinion, I couldn’t care less about the FSF. This is an organization that teaches people that proprietary software is immoral. I mean, this is basically the reason for why Open Source happened because, despite all the good that RMS and the FSF did in jump-starting an ecosystem around GPL licensing, the FSF was and will always be a political cult, all the discussions it generates are political, and I have better things to do.
I don’t know what sense exactly oz meant, but here’s what the About page says:
Brigading: Lobsters is not to be used to whip up an outrage mob and direct them at targets, especially individuals and small projects. It always feels righteous at first and becomes an awful tool for abuse. There isn’t a clear-cut line between this and discussing trends and advocating for improvements in the field, so expect frustrating judgement calls.
I guess the definition of “brigading” there is “to whip up an outrage mob and direct them at targets”.
Which is why it probably has no place on Lobsters. It is drama in our community (at least judging by the Pareto distribution of upvotes vs. flags for this post). You’ll be more likely to find people that won’t downplay this report if you go to Reddit/Twitter/etc.
Off-topic or not, I find it too significant to flag it even if it is not strictly about computing.
It refers to a person who has profound impact on the shape of the worldwide software community.
It documents thoroughly, with countless references to sources, that is Stallman’s statements and manifests in his own site - a concern far too significant to be overlooked, flagged and deleted, even if for many it’s off-topic as in well, paedophilia and sexual harassment are not relevant for me.
Flagging does more than hide it from your feed. It marks the account. If you get enough flags you get a nice message suggesting you delete your account (not a joke).
I think “off topic” should be used sparingly. It is not an “I disagree with this” button or a downvote substitute.
That’s the one. It is more nuanced. I was going from memory.
Even though it’s couched, the phrase “delete your account” was quite memorable for me. It’s also a little different experience when it shows up as a banner on the page rather than reading an ERB partial on mobile.
While I think the original banner was in place to “gently” remind trolls that their antics were not welcome, it had the unfortunate effect of also being applied to prolific posters who attracted an unproportionate amount of flags.
I think I’m the top / second most flagged poster on here every once in a while and it’s honestly ridiculous. I’ve reached out to the mods twice about it with no response, so the whole “delete your post or contact the mods to discuss” is seemingly not a meaningful choice.
Can’t blame burntsushi for it a bit. I’ve considered deleting my account over it since it literally suggests that you consider just that. At this point I’ve moved past it and don’t really care about the banner at all.
Unfortunately, lobsters has the same problem that every site with a scoring system has. People downvote or flag or whatever because they disagree with you, not because you lack substance. No amount of good faith engagement will ever keep people from flagging you, and there is seemingly no recourse for flagging erroneously.
It seems to me possible to strongly support a thing and yet more strongly support principles that one sees as saying it doesn’t belong here. (I am not commenting on whether it does belong here.)
I don’t even think it has to be “more strongly support” re: principles. It’s seems entirely consistent to say “this is the most important issue in my life” while also saying “and I will discuss it in the venues where it is appropriate to do so”, even if you consider discussion in appropriate venues to be of lesser importance. One dictates the value of the conversation, one is simply a practical acceptance of where that issue is best discussed.
I don’t think this gotcha! argument really applies here. I thought to be important to show that off-topic flags are not (all?) in support of Stallman because that’s not what they are for. In addition, the discussion immediately derailed with insults against the report’s authors and trolling—the report on itself is not controversial, but Stallman supporters are trying to make it look like so.
Compare it with the situation on the orange site, where this submission is much more topical: it was flagged to death and never reached the home page. That’s not what happens with off-topic flags on lobste.rs and the link is still #1.
All I’m going to say about this is: I’ve known for years, tried to warn people about it, and nothing ever happens. Same as the C++ ISO group. I really wish we had better leaders at the top of software engineering, but especially at the top of the Libre Software movement.
Not going into a sub thread here, but there is/used to be a registered sex offender in the C++ ISO committee. You can find a lot about that by quick googling.
Standing on stage with a 13 year old girl, doing his “St. IGNUcius” routine, Stallman says “she’s still a virgin for now [places hand on her shoulder, leering], but I hope to do something about that one of these days”. Eww.
I mean, say what you will about free speech and witch hunts etc., but how on earth can the FSF want to be represented by someone who publicly does this kind of thing?
If the spokesman of Acme corp – while in the middle of the yearly press conference – were to lower his trousers and take a massive dump on the middle of the stage, you may object that “this rationally doesn’t say something about Acme corp” or “it is the individual who shat, not the institution”. You may be, in a theoretical world where persons are perfectly rational agents, and cows isotropic spherical friction-less objects right. You may however quickly find out that in our actual world, the disgust that this hypothetical spokesman’s behavior would have inspired to the audience would have influenced the audience’s opinion of Acme corp. This spokesman would be quickly out of job, because it is pretty obvious that Acme corp doesn’t want to be associated with the image of the aforementioned scene.
Seeing a seventy something years old man shit-eating grinly put his hand on a thirteen year old girl while implying that he would like to have sex with her does elicit in me and several others a similar response as the one the Acme corp audience would have, a response which we would hope the FSF would like not to be associated with. Regardless of whether the joke is not understood well and RMS is actually playing humor 4D chess by taking a stab at the catholic church debacle with CSA (which I have understood to be his position), the job of a spokesperson is to represent their institution. It is at least a job (and hence to be carried out with professionalism and competence) if not in the case of the FSF an honor. Being the spokesman of the FSF and making pedophilia jokes in a professional setting is at least incompetence.
So to answer your very question. The FSF keeping RMS as their public representative at least says that the FSF has long lost the plot as to how to properly communicate to the general public. A less favorable interpretation would be that the FSF is entirely enfeoffed to RMS who is showing blatant signs of poor judgment and unfitness for a political role, and thus that the FSF itself is unfit to feel this role.
What is the intended purpose of leaving this up for “discussion”, given that currently 94/207 (a hair over 45%) of community votes are “this does not belong here”?
Once upon a time we were “not the internet torch and pitchfork store”. To what degree is or is not that still the case?
Watching this thread today, I’ve thought a lot about a comment about why a similar story should stay up. I didn’t remember your reply until seeing it again. I think our opinions are probably in the about the same place, so I’m going to write with an eye towards turning that disagreement into clearer policy.
Your stat of the number of flags is a good point; this is currently the most-flagged story on the site. 60 users have hidden the story, which is also up at the top with a couple rants and some satire. I’m still very wary of a heckler’s veto on hard topics, especially when it would benefit the people with power over organizations. Despite the flags the discussion has been substantive.
I didn’t quite take this as brigading but it’s the kind of unclear call I wrote about in the guidelines. The bottom third of this post is about how the FSF/GNU have handled these events. It advocates specific steps to reform the org. It doesn’t attempt to harass individuals into silence, though it gets real close when it says “raise our voices in condemnation of sexual violence and those who protect perpetrators of it”.
A little while ago I made the opposite call when I removed a post for brigading because it was about a business deal and ended with a call-to-action that techies should scream about it. The two differences between the stories are authorship and desired outcome. This one is a group (supposedly) trying to improve an ideologically aligned org; the other was a wronged customer. This one advocates speaking and the other screaming. There’s not a lot of daylight between the two. The difference between activism and brigading seems to come down to perceived intent and likelihood of causing harm by harassment. Some of that likelihood is informed the the US law around public figures.
On that topic of harassment, I’m especially unsympathetic to these authors’ use of anonymity. They’re not involuntary public figures like some of Appelbaum’s victims trying to reveal unknown abuse related to his position; they’ve just decided it’s convenient to hide their identities while publicly relitigating someone’s character.
The guidelines, for reference, that I think are relevant here:
Topicality: Lobsters is focused pretty narrowly on computing; tags like art don’t imply every piece of art is on-topic. Some rules of thumb for great stories to submit: Will this improve the reader’s next program? Will it deepen their understanding of their last program? Will it be more interesting in five or ten years?
Some things that are off-topic here but popular on larger, similar sites: entrepreneurship, management, news about companies that employ a lot of programmers, investing, world events, anthropology, self-help, personal productivity systems, last-resort customer service requests via public shaming, “I wanted to see what this site’s amazing users think about this off-topic thing”, and defining the single morally correct economic and political system for the entire world when we can’t even settle tabs vs. spaces.
Brigading: Lobsters is not to be used to whip up an outrage mob and direct them at targets, especially individuals and small projects. It always feels righteous at first and becomes an awful tool for abuse. There isn’t a clear-cut line between this and discussing trends and advocating for improvements in the field, so expect frustrating judgement calls.
For topicality, how is any of this going to:
…improve the reader’s next program?
…deepen their understanding of their last program?
…be more interesting in five or ten years?
This submission clearly fails the first two points, and may or may not be of historical interest on the third.
For brigading, again, I’ll cite chapter and verse:
Lobsters is not to be used to whip up an outrage mob and direct them at targets, especially individuals and small projects. It always feels righteous at first and becomes an awful tool for abuse.
There is plenty of arguing from righteousness in this thread right now. There is clear direction of target here-Stallman–and a clear attempt to alter the behavior of the FSF.
This submission fails, plainly, the criteria for being here, and it’s clearly annoyed half the people that bothered to vote on it.
I appreciate your concern about “heckler’s veto”, but these heckles are all in favor of maintaining law and order, such as it is, on this site using what passes for case law and established guidelines.
There’s a broader problem, and that is that you cannot flirt with activism here and pretend brigading here won’t happen. The point I made in our linked discussion remains: these people do not care about the Lobsters ecosystem and community more than they care about whatever axe they have to grind. They will drop–further–the quality of discourse on this site in their pursuit of smearing people they don’t like, mobilizing others against those people, and signalling to each other that they’re on the right side of history.
We’ve seen Lobsters used for social amplification attacks, for example with the Save Nix Together and related Nix drama and the Appelbaum business you linked (speaking of, did anything in that thread do anything in the near 8 years since that went down, or was it just impotent nerd screeching?). It only hurts the community.
You need to decide if you’re going to be a useful idiot for these people (in this case, judging by headers and registrar information, 90% likely Drew DeVault) or if you’re going to enforce the rules of the site. I don’t particularly care which you do–honestly a meta referendum to establish site norms around acceptable brigading for the blessed riff-raff and belief systems would solve for both elegantly–but I suggest that for the future health of this place you make a decision and remove the ambiguity.
(I’m not going to bother arguing the particulars of this case because life is too short to spend it defending every screwy belief RMS has and because it’s incredibly off-topic and the discussion trite and tiresome with the lobsters we have.)
I was thinking about this for a good while tonight.
For topicality, how is any of this going to:
…improve the reader’s next program?
It improves the reader’s next program by not assigning copyright to FSF until and unless they become more toxic. It improves the reader’s next program by thinking “maybe I should write this in portable shell instead of relying on GNU Bash”. Unfortunately, RMS’ opinions have hurt both the GCC project and the glibc project (and addendum, which took another year to finally resolve) in the recent past. Things like this should make everyone seriously reconsider donating their program to the GNU Project, so far as anyone does consider that any more.
I was pondering that as well. In addition to what you mentioned, it might motivate those who want to use one of the FSF’s copyleft licenses to license their work under a specific version rather than “vX or later” if they don’t feel that FSF leadership is steering things in the right direction.
I’ve always been inclined to specify my version of the license on those occasions when I do choose copyleft, and it’s certainly strengthened my resolve in that regard.
Honestly my primary critique of the FSF is that they are not setting themselves up for a world where rms has passed away. The governance etc has bent to be his personal vehicle, which is bad governance. Following that, it also isn’t addressing modern computing trends, but older trends. Anyway.
I don’t like this blog post. It’s nasty without need. Its calling for party line behavior and is hunting for “wrongthink”, looking to cancel anyone who doesn’t dance to their tune. And it’s anon - at the least, the editors should not be anon.
rms isn’t going to change his mind. He’s spent a lifetime being weird and stubborn. So what are the editors really gunning for? That’s the question that should be looked at.
I’d judge they are probably trying to exile the FSF and its associated software, licenses from the domain of acceptable system components, and tar any supporter as being Wrongthinky.
What’s the nastiness without need? They point out that RMS has been credibly accused of sexual harassment and is on record as being in favor of moving the balance of sexual offenses away from protection of the vulnerable and towards the sexual gratification of those who do things that are currently considered criminal. If you think that’s nastiness, then it’s entirely on RMS part.
Given that all the discussion in this thread is either criticizing RMS for the positions and behavior listed or attempting to defend him by calling this stuff unwarranted or a non-issue I think it’s self evident that RMS’s opinions are controversial enough to distract from the stated mission of the FSF. At minimum he should pick between his causes because he can’t effectively be a figurehead for the FSF while also advocating what can most neutrally be described as highly controversial opinions.
I don’t find this report particularly convincing - because it conflicts several different themes, and is intentionally confusing on a few particular facts, for example:
A common defense relies on Stallman’s insistence that minors over the age of 12 or 13 are sexually mature and can meaningfully consent to having sex with an adult. Consider Stallman’s remarks on the case of Cody Wilson:
Cody Wilson has been charged with “sexual assault” on a “child” after a session with a sex worker of age 16.
Claiming sexual minimum age should be 16 is a lot less divisive than claiming it should be 12! Parts of the US and large parts of Europe has the age of sexual consent at 16.
The report states:
Some believe that Stallman’s speech has not caused material harm, or that his fringe views are not taken seriously; we provide evidence to dismiss all of these arguments in this report.
Which they don’t really do to the extent that they claim?
Parts of the report argues that a private citizen should not publish questionable opinions (I don’t see a reference to hate speech) at all.
Partly it tries to argue voicing such opinions isn’t compatible with being a public figure (this might be true).
Part of the report appears to claim that one simply should not discuss the age of consent.
I don’t doubt some of RMS’ writings are hurtful - and there might be an argument for removing him from certain roles - but this long litany of mixed quotes isn’t that argument in my opinion.
It’s a shame, because if his statements and actions have helped foster misogynistic attitudes in the various spaces for Free software - then that does warrant discussion and action. But with how the selected quotes are framed, it’s hard to read this as anything other than a personal attack.
Cody Wilson has been charged with “sexual assault” on a “child” after a session with a sex worker of age 16.
Claiming sexual minimum age should be 16 is a lot less divisive than claiming it should be 12! Parts of the US and large parts of Europe has the age of sexual consent at 16.
I want to point out that in places where sex work is legal and the regular age of consent is below 18, it’s still usually the case that sex work has a higher age bar. In general, it’s common for any situation where the older party is in a position of power over the younger party to have a higher minimum age of consent.
Reading just the introduction, I find it weird to put ‘Distinction between “children” and other minors’ alongside more problematic (perhaps even criminal?) behaviour.
As a matter of fact, there’s a continuum between childhood and adulthood, and not everybody grow up at the same rate. And I think it is obvious to anyone that most 15 year old are neither children nor adults. As a matter of law we do need some cut-off point, and most countries have several: differing levels of responsibility, from none when you’re an infant, to full when you attain your political majority. And even then there’s some variability: if I recall correctly in many US states you can drive at 16 but drink only at 21.
And then there’s the age of consent. Depending on country that ain’t always 18. In France for instance that’s more like 16, with caveats: if the older party has a kind of authority over the younger party (professor, cop, celebrity…) they might still get prosecuted.
Even in normal relationships between teens it makes a whole lot of sense to allow a legal adult and an underage to have sex. If the rule was “both must be over 18 or both must be under 18”, you’d get in silly situations where a 16yo girl dating a 17yo boy could have all the sex they want, but as soon as the boy turns 18 he could be jailed if they don’t stop until the girl too turn 18. We’d have to have some leeway, in the name of consistency. Or forbid underage sex altogether, but I don’t think this one would go well.
Now there is such a thing as taking it too far. There is a world of difference for instance, between a 13yo girl who barely got past puberty, and a 17yo one who has almost, if not fully, matured. So we’ve got to have a limit, age of consent and all that jazz. And it won’t be perfect for everybody (different people mature at different rates). And I also have no clue where the age of consent should be. I can guess, but I believe such things should be informed by scientific evidence about people’s maturity levels, power dynamics and likely a host of other stuff that’s not even on my radar.
Now there’s some quote by RMS that I find very interesting:
Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.
Through personal conversations in recent years, I’ve learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.
The authors of this report seem to say this was not nearly enough of a retraction. What I find very interesting though is the reason RMS said he changed his mind: harm. Adults should not have sex with children because it harms the child. And I think this is a fairly good north star: people should not harm people. Convince RMS that 13yo/adult sex hurts the 13yo, and he will say adults should not do that. Convince him 17yo/18yo sex hurts the 17yo, he’ll say the 18yo should no do that.
Now that’s just the one thing. If even half of the report correctly argues for genuinely problematic stuff (and I’m inclined to guess it does even though I have yet to read past the introduction), that is still very damning for RMS.
sigh one problem I’ve had with this report is that, as with many activist materials, it’s hard to know if it’s the real deal or an attempt at mob justice. That’s why my other (at the time of writing) two posts in this thread were solely about things other posters brought up when examining it. If it’s mob justice, I’d rather not lend my voice to it.
In a possibly futile attempt to not do that now, either: when reading this, it’s worth remembering that both RMS’ perspective and many of his readers’ are very US-centric, so there’s lots of cultural baggage that’s just not obvious to us across the pond when reading both Stallman’s writings and this report.
For example, his particular choice for when a person starts being a teenager, rather than a child, happens to be the most popular choice among American pedophile apologists, too – something that I wish whoever explained to me could also bleach from my brain, thank you very much.
I don’t mean to say or to imply that Stallman also shares their other opinions (or even this one; posturing for controversy’s sake is a thing), or that he would ever harm a child, or that he has. I simply don’t know any of that, and I am skeptical of anything that comes out of, or is about, large corporations or important non-profits, including this report. I mean to point out that this particular limit, which to you and me likely just sounds like a disturbing opinion attached to an otherwise arbitrary number, carries a more definitive connotation to my American friends who are a bit more familiar with the scum of the Earth.
Reading just the introduction, I find it weird to put ‘Distinction between “children” and other minors’ alongside more problematic (perhaps even criminal?) behaviour.
I suspect the point is not that making a distinction is in and of itself wrong. As you correctly note, there are significant differences between a teen and a 6 year old.
However, I suspect that that what they mean is the use of that real distinction to argue that sexual relations between 13 and 30 year olds are unproblematic is, regardless of stated intent, arguing in favor of exploitation.
I would argue this is a fundamentally reasonable position, described in a way that makes it sound unreasonable. If it turns out the author truly thinks distinguishing teens and young children is unreasonable in any context, that would be ludicrous.
Edit: I also find your penultimate paragraph very odd. While his retraction is better than nothing, an abstract commitment to not harming people is much much less important than the question “are you doing things that harm these people (or arguing that it’s ok to do things that harm them)?” Around the world, you’ll find relatively few people who openly say “our goal is to oppress these people”, it’s more often “it’s for their own good that we rule them.”
You may partially agree with RMS’ campaign but it’s certainly not a ludicrous accusation. He is in fact arguing for a loosening of laws that have only recently reached anything like an adequate level of child protection. His political positions are easily confused with those of the FSF and free software movement.
Not sure you mean by “accusation” here, I personally take it for granted that RMS makes a rather sharp difference between a child and a teen. The way it’s presented, especially at the beginning, gives the impression that the editors condemn that distinction. Which, you will agree with me here, would be utterly ridiculous: there is a difference between children and teens, and there’s nothing problematic with acknowledging that.
What is problematic though, is taking it as far as RMS does. On the one hand, there is a distinction, and we can wager that while both child rape and teen rape are horrible crimes, child rape is the more horrible of the two: the younger the victim, the worse it gets. On the other hand, RMS seems to view, say, 13yo/adult sex as no big deal, thus ignoring the power and experience imbalance that makes is basically impossible for the teen to give consent — which means rape.
So, while I understand, and mostly agree with, the editor’s main point, this particular argument was poorly formulated and easy to straw-man into something ludicrous if you stop reading too soon.
There are two kinds of people in this world, those who are willing to condemn Jeffrey Epstein and what he did, and those who read a small portion of an introduction of a report condemning a man who did not, and write an essay equivocating about that man, who has pretty publicly made it his mission his entire life to try and reduce the age of consent.
It’s hard to interpret your comment charitably. Quite clearly you’re implying those two kinds are mutually exclusive, and quite clearly you are using it to imply stuff about me that’s not only false, but unsubstantiated.
Isn’t this something that should be put to Stallman for response before using it to assassinate his character and the free software movement by association? Or does responsible journalism no longer exist? Like, there’s a difference with him being wrong about sexual activity’s impact on minors under 16 (the average age of consent around the world) versus him being a malicious pedophile intent on defending child sex abuse.
Thankfully you can find this addressed in the report, which also details his various apologies and how he has worked to undermine his own apologies over time. This is not something new coming out of nowhere that Stallman would respond to in a novel way, it is documentation of a very long pattern of behavior.
I feel like responses to Stallman usually don’t come with data, so the arguments and rebuttals and such turn into semantic warfare. This isn’t that sort of thing.
Journalistic ethics vary worldwide. Here in Europe, for example, I’m not aware that the right of reply is generally understood as requiring that the subject of a piece be allowed to see it and respond before publication. This may be different in English-speaking countries where the right of reply might not enjoy the same legal protection as here. In any case, the right of reply generally covers factual statements only (which would be the numerous quotations from Stallman’s blog, transcripts of his public appearances etc.) – in these cases, the editors have noted Stallman’s excuses, partial retractions, etc. where they exist. The rebuttal sections would not be covered by right of reply, since they are commentary and analysis. The factual sections are very well-cited with hyperlinks. There is very little that would be covered by a right of reply.
As for the accusation of a motive to ‘assassinate [the character of?] the free software movement’ – pointing out Stallman’s personal flaws of any kind really should not affect the free software movement in toto. Most of the people I’ve seen posting and sharing this are themselves free software activists. I have good reason to believe that the authors are free software programmers, users, and activists. This is not a psyop by … (I don’t know who the anti-free-software boogeyman is since Microsoft embraced FOSS, but whoever people are blaming for anti-free software propaganda now.) From all I can tell, those who authored and many of those agree with this report want, among other things, a free software movement whose reputation is less unfairly tied to the reputation of one man – a man whose reputation deserves to be called into question when he keeps doing things such as what is described in this report.
These aren’t new allegations, and this isn’t the first time RMS’s conduct has been reported.
It’s merely a documentation of years of recurring problematic behavior, non-apologies, and FSF looking the other way.
They all had numerous chances to respond and correct these issues, and they didn’t. In 2019 the same reports about the same issues have flared up again, and even resulted in RMS being removed from the board… temporarily.
RMS and FSF have shown time after time that they’re not going to change.
There is no response needed, and even if there was one, there is no reason to believe any of it is genuine, and not yet another feigned concern, insincere apology, superficial change, and back to normal.
I didn’t get that sense, at all, from the document. Rather it contained a fairly simple proposal for the free software movement (in the form of the FSF) to eject Stallman based on his publicly stated opinions.
If there’s any character damage being done, it’ll be by the FSF to themselves, if they fail to act following this publication.
Isn’t this something that should be put to Stallman for response before […]? Or does responsible journalism no longer exist?
I do not think that “responsible journalism” requires informing subject of an article about its content beforehand. I would say more - in many cases, especially in investigative journalism about public people, it is something that will not be sent for approval/response beforehand.
It’s a little more subtle than that. See, for instance, this article from NPR about what kind of factors are taken into account when deciding how long to wait after a request for comment.
Reaching out for a comment isn’t a legal requirement under many (most?) jurisdictions but it’s usually good practice, especially in investigative journalism. However, it’s something where the journalist is expected to exercise their own judgement. There are some basic rules of thumb for when not to do it, too, like not calling someone for a comment on something they’ve already issued a public position on, or if you’re not publishing new material but just quoting things that are public knowledge by now and, literally, old news.
So why do journalists do it? There’s a lot of reasons, some editorial in nature, sometimes it Legal’s advice, but also, ultimately, just to be on the safe side, because:
It’s rare, but it happens – sometimes you’re really missing a critical piece of context that only the other person can provide, or you literally got something wrong. The unfortunate reality is that some things wind up in print not only due to a journalist’s persistence, but also as a byproduct of institutional power struggle, and when that happens, not everyone you talk to tells you the whole story, or even the truth, for that matter.
It’s easy to forget this but whoever’s involved in what you’re investigating doesn’t live in a vacuum. Reaching out to someone for a comment also acts as a heads-up to e.g. maybe not send their nine year-old to school for a day or two if they might be at the receiving end of hatred directed at their parents, even if the parents deserve all that hatred.
When it’s done, it’s always done as a courtesy and in the form of a request for comment, though, there’s no “approval” there. As in, the journalist will call that person or their press representative, say hey, I’m X from Y, we’re going to publish a material that says such and such, would you care to comment on that. Asking for that material not to be published is a very big no-no.
I don’t know if what’s in the linked report warrants a request for comments because I just haven’t followed this thing closely enough in the past few years. I’m only mentioning this (sauce: used to work for a print publication like 20 years ago) because journalistic practices are easy to have opinions on, and maybe a quasi-insider perspective (I was young and never wrote anything of importance, but I worked with people who weren’t and covered real stuff), even if out-of-date, would be useful to someone.
Character assassination is all that comes to mind when i.e. the section on “Credible allegations of sexual misconduct” contains zero sexual activity, not even exposing himself to women which is what I expected to read. He emotionally pressured/bullied/coerced a woman to go on a date with him, disgusting and embarrassing behaviour, obviously wrong - but with nothing sexual, it’s not a great lead to the “sexual misconduct” section.
It would seem your definition of sexual misconduct requires lewd/severe acts, which is false. Sexual misconduct is a fairly wide range of offenses, including but not limited to sexual harassment and sexual coercion.
Attempting to frame it as requiring lewd acts only serves to dilute the voices of people on the receiving end of the harassment.
Character assassination is all that comes to mind when i.e. the section on “Credible allegations of sexual misconduct” contains zero sexual activity, not even exposing himself to women which is what I expected to read.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into your comment, but your expectation was that there should be a lewd act for the “sexual misconduct”.
You can split hairs all you want, unwanted advances by people in a position of power even without a mention of sex is still considered sexual harassment by most courts in the US(where the vast majority of the report is about).
Having a teen come on stage and make a joke about virginity isn’t only inappropriate for that person, it is also subjecting every one in the audience to the same treatment.
I agree with you. It’s sexual harassment to put a 13-year-old into a sexual context, regardless of their permission. It also makes everyone in the audience an unwitting accomplice, and he will point to their silence as approval.
We should bear in mind that the majority of the evidence that exists is not going to be available to us. The reports we have paint a picture of someone who attempted to exercise authority to gain a sexual favor in a few situations where they didn’t really have the authority. This suggests there were other times this tactic bore fruit, or he wouldn’t have kept trying.
You can’t assassinate someone’s character by correctly pointing out that he has, and continues to, defend pedophilia. All they are doing is expanding the context in which people evaluate the character’s output.
They go on a date, it goes well or more likely doesn’t go well because of the circumstances, and grown adults make decisions. I don’t have the rizz to go back to mine for coffee after every first date, and would be surprised if Stallman did.
To cool off the descendant threads slightly, I would say that many stories of coercive relationships start with this kind of coercion. Whatever power differential someone can exploit to coerce someone into a date, they can also use to coerce other things, and claims from the victim against the aggressor become harder to prosecute because of the entanglement of the relationship. Abusive relationships are legal, in a sense, although the abuse isn’t, there is a coercive context that makes even reporting abuse difficult, let alone prosecuting it.
Back to the article, I wouldn’t assume that just because someone failed to coerce a couple people, they wouldn’t try again with others, especially when the time span is so wide between the two specific claims in the article. I would expect coercion in the beginning to be a prelude to more coercion later. RMS also spends a great deal of energy defending sexual aggression and trying to redefine what constitutes sexual coercion on his website. Taking these positions, while also having attempted to coerce people (even if it’s “just” dates or attempting pick-ups), is not a great combination.
To give an example less specific to this context, in many countries still today, marital rape is not considered a crime—and indeed, until 1993 it wasn’t a crime in all the United States.
I think this is the first time when I have to write something and preface it with a trigger warning. Hopefully I’m doing this right, I’m not entirely sure how this goes.
None of this is specifically about something in this report, this is just about your comment. I’d like to try to explain why you (and some of the people downthread) are getting stronger reactions than you think are warranted. I imagine, or at least I hope, that you think it’s being blown out of proportion simply from a lack of experience – as in hopefully you were never bullied into a date and if you ever went on a date that wasn’t good, it was just boring or something.
“Likely doesn’t go well because of the circumstances” is an euphemism that only covers the kind of awkward but harmless cringe of, say, a friend playing matchmaker and setting you up with someone who turns out to be a devout vegan and your idea of a cool first date begins with dinner at this new burger joint where the star of the menu is something called the Mega Smoked Bacon Four-Pounder And No We Didn’t Mean Quarter.
Being pressured into a date is not that kind of cringe. Especially not when one person is on an entirely different “level” than the other – not necessarily in terms of formal workplace hierarchy, social pressure works like that, too.
Saying “no” isn’t just a matter of whether you like that person or not, it’s also a matter of wondering if that’ll have any consequences over your work/study/circle of friends, and living with that choice for however long it takes. The teacher you’re turning down today, as a freshman, may teach a senior year class. The charismatic person you’re saying no to may not be in charge of your work but if they have management’s year, they might as well be.
You think turning down the date is the end of it but depending on circumstances it may not be, it’s the kind of thing that can have long-lasting consequences with the wrong person. And more generally, bullying someone into a date, even if they eventually stick by their refusal, isn’t fine for the same reason why bullying someone isn’t fine even if you don’t beat them up in the end.
Saying “yes” is even worse: it’s (hopefully just) an evening in which you’re constantly wondering at what point avoiding whatever you’re risking by saying “no” begins to not be worth the pain of saying “yes”, and then realising you’re basically doing risk-benefit analyses and trying to bargain with yourself. And as you do that, you also can’t help but wonder if the person who wouldn’t take no for an answer when they asked you out would take no for an answer when it comes to the rest of the date. What will they do if you don’t hold their hand? What if you won’t kiss them? What if you won’t say yes to another date?
Sometimes, when they’re young (edit: this part is specifically about the report, it’s about something that happened between people in their late teens/mid-twenties), people do this sort of stupid thing just because they don’t understand how hurtful it is – out of ignorance, or loneliness, or whatever, we’re all human. I get that, especially with “unwritten”, social rules; there was no abuse there, but as an awkward, nerdy teenager, I once dated one of the most popular girls in my high school, and I swear to God I didn’t understand anything going on around me, I just didn’t get how cool kids functioned. The entire human society gets that, it’s how we’ve come up with apologies – which can’t undo things, but they can at least re-establish some lost decency.
Also, sure, no amount of space policing will keep you safe from psychopaths, so developing a thick skin for these things is useful. But given the choice, why not be nice, instead of being someone’s villain origin story?
“More likely doesn’t go well” doesn’t even begin to capture how bad these things can be. Depending on circumstances, the rizz may not be what gets the other person back to yours for a coffee. (Edit:) I get that you’re not condoning coercion or sexual harassment; but a) you may not realise it but your comment sounds a lot like the kind of stuff people who do condone that say, so you’re getting flak for it, and b) when someone is coerced into a date, some of the decision-making ability that you think adults have is lost; that’s what makes it so awful.
I’m not sure what the correct flag type is for this comment, but are we really a community that welcomes comments that say that, when men bully women to try to get them to go on dates with them, women should simply acquiesce?
I’m sorry, but you seem to be reading something I didn’t say. I categorically do not believe women should acquiesce to bullying behaviour and I think it’s disgusting that Stallman did so. If you assumed as you say in another comment that I meant everything was fine because this woman went on the date, that’s on you - I didn’t imply that, I don’t think that, it wouldn’t justify the behaviour, and you should try to be more charitable when reading something you disagree with. I appreciate @linkdd reading my comment charitably, instead of making me out to be some insane misogynist monster.
He emotionally pressured/bullied/coerced a woman to go on a date with him, disgusting and embarrassing behaviour, obviously wrong
To:
are we really a community that welcomes comments that say that, when men bully women to try to get them to go on dates with them, women should simply acquiesce?
At the point where I interjected, where the answer to ‘What would you expect to be the likely outcomes of being coerced into a dating someone?’ began with the words ‘They go on a date’.
The outcome of being coerced into dating someone comes after said date. So it feels logical that the answer begins with “They go on a date”. And the author also re-state their disapproval with “doesn’t go well because of the circumstances”.
The implication that everything would be alright (that the coercion/bullying would stop?) once they had been on a date once and the victim had made a ‘decision’ is another dangerously naïve aspect of the comment author’s premise.
Believing things like this is how people end up in long-term abusive relationships.
I may have interpreted the author’s comment differently. What I understood was: “this specific example did not seem to have led to anything worse than the bad thing it already was”
re: the last section, titled “Recommendations for reconciliation and closure” – does anyone know of a cadre of likely, enthusiastic replacements for those members the authors suggest step aside? It seems to me like the report misses an opportunity by encouraging a boycott. Why not press for replacements who are committed to a useful and corrective agenda? I feel like there’s no shortage of regrettable characters waiting to replace the current regrettable characters. Is there someone worth promoting here?
I prefer the call for a boycott there. Not that I’m terribly fond of them (destroying structures also destroys their good parts), but because if the report were to name replacements, it would damage those replacements. For one, it would put people on the spot that don’t want that position (potentially exposing them to years of questions why they didn’t), second, if successful they would also be the replacements that are there because of “that report”.
I think it’s better to ask for boycott then - it is actionable and a threat, but it gives liberty to those that actually want to step up. A boycott is easy to drop, a reputation is hard to repair.
Please ask the writers of the reports, not me. I think some effective boycotts can be designed here, but why would I after saying that I’m not fond of them?
I don’t see anything new in there and I am not going to wade through it in detail again. Stallmann is consistent and has some points. Some of those, e.g. related to child porn, are relevant to freedom and computers.
He’s also probably an old lecher and should be slapped around. I am fine with calling him on that and having him removed, if people closer to him agree that’s indeed the case.
OTOH, I am pretty sick with the US cancel culture. Mob is not justice. All this attempting to gather as much crap on a person to assisinate them is disgusting.
I would very much prefer functioning proper channels to resolve situations such as these. I don’t believe that going public and trying to gather as much smear on a person to resolve injustice is a scalable long-term solution.
And yes, this is a textbook cancel culture. Pressing his employers to dismiss him couple years back, for example? You are OK with this simply because your are not fond of the particular person, but the method itself is wrong.
Nobody knows what will the moral fashion look like in ten years. You assume it’s going to continue to be liberal socialism that gave us Star Trek. I would very much love if that was the case, but it’s also highly probable that the next thing is not going to be as nice.
I mean there have been cases where Korean companies fired people for being associated with “radical feminism” despite it all being a complete misunderstanding. But those people still had zero recourse against the mob “justice”.
In Czechia, many small people lost everything they had because other enterprising people associated them with bourgeoisie after WW2. Because communism was in the fashion and it was not safe to speak against the implementation details.
Recently there has been a significant backlash against voyeurism awareness campaign in public transport in Czechia. Same with Istanbul treaty. Fico in Slovakia is pretty vocally reactionary, too. Using similar rhetoric Hitler did back in the day. Heck look at what gets said in the US nowadays.
It’s still very much possible for the scales to tip the other way and if they do, what are you going to do?
If there’s no fair handling of the case, no clear rules to follow… Are you willing to fight? Because that’s how you will get your civil war.
So, please, use your excess energy to ask for a clear Code of Conduct with working enforcement and make sure 3/5 majority is on board with it instead of focusing on specific people.
For those wondering, clicking on this link will redirect to https://stallmansupport.org. It plays on the ambiguity between stallman-report.org (the report) and stallman-report.com (the “alternative view”)—quite deceptive behavior.
A lot of professional publications hide identity of their writers. From the top of my head, The Economist, EDGE Magazine, various geopolitical analysis teams, any whistleblower, etc.
Point is, identity of the speaker is often not relevant to the point made.
I think this report is being written anonymously to protect the authors from hatemail, and that’s fine and fits with a long tradition of activist writing.
I think all of the examples that you gave except the whistleblower are more likely to use anonymity for dubious purposes, though. Here are some common bad reasons why publications use anonymity:
denying personal credit and recognition to journalists to keep their wages down and make it harder for them to leave (writers for EDGE and Polygon have complained about this and it is a common theme in credits for games, tv and film)
to obscure that the writers are very junior (The Economist has a reputation for being written by undergraduate and MSc students, though I can’t find any evidence of this right now; it is also common for junior reporters (and researchers) to write stuff that is then credited to higher-profile writers or their bosses)
to obscure the vested interests or strong biases of the writers (can’t think of any examples right now) or principal sources (very common)
There’s a long tradition in anarchist and activist writing of crediting things to “Anonymous” or to a pseudonym (often used by a group). This is usually done to protect the authors writing about their crimes or illegal or unpopular ideas from retaliation; or it is done to emphasise that a text is a collective work; or it is done to encourage readers to read critically rather than trusting appeals to authority. I think all of those reasons fit the Stallman Report.
We’re on a forum right now lol do you think ‘insanitybit’ is my given name? It was an anonymous handle that I used for years before it was ever attached to my person publicly.
I’d say the vast majority of my interactions are with anonymous persons.
I’d say the vast majority of my interactions are with anonymous persons.
I will nitpick and say that most of my online interactions are with pseudonymous persons. That is to say, I don’t know who “insanitybit” is, but I do know/expect that “insanitybit” is the same person each time I interact with them on this forum.
In a non-nitpicky way, I will add that while I think this “Stallman Report” post is off-topic for this forum and I have flagged it as such, it does cite its sources so thoroughly that it should not matter whether or not I know who is writing. The things they’re saying are so thoroughly cited that they’d be trivially falsifiable if not true. It seems weird to use the anonymous nature of the poster as an attack, given that.
I am a around 30 years old, and here is something I don’t get: why do we care about the FSF? This is a sincere question that may help keep the discussion on topic. To me FSF already feels like a relic of a bygone time of CS and free software, and RMS embodies this “ancientness”. All of this is free software that can be forked, and RMS relevance is mostly linked to giving talks if I’m not mistaken. Why is so much focus put on getting the FSF to fire RMS? Why not let them both die down in their own little bubble? Fork the software, and stop attending RMS’s lectures. What am I missing?
You’ve missed the decade when it was really uncertain whether Free Software, or even Open Source, would exist beyond a fringe.
In the 80-90s all “home computers” were entirely proprietary closed-source systems. In the 90s and early 00s, Microsoft was incredibly dominant. Office + IE lock-in + winmodems made it nearly impossible not to use Windows. Competition didn’t matter, was unaffordable, and also proprietary anyway.
Microsoft was unashamedly aggressive, and busy spreading FUD. #1 software company in the world kept saying that exposing source code is dangerous, non-commercial software is made by shady amateurs, DRM is necessary for “trustworthy computing”. They even supported a Business Software Alliance that pretended to be anti-piracy agency, and incited police raids on Linux users under the premise that Linux is a useless junk with no purpose other than to illegally buy computers without paying OEM fees to Microsoft, and hide the real commercial software they must have stolen.
We’ve dodged a massive bullet, but that took a lot of advocacy. RMS/FSF have been influential in starting counter-movements. RMS has been proven right on software freedoms.
They’re irrelevant now because Microsoft has lost that battle, even though Free Software didn’t win.
Azure now running Linux feels surreal. Microsoft literally used to call Linux “cancer”.
OK, but why do we care about FSF now? Is FSF actually preventing women and minorities from participating in Free Software?
Yes, they are.
FSF is still a high profile organisation in FOSS, in charge of GPL and a few projects, plus they do show up in many places trough their campaigns.
Most importantly, FSF and RMS still having support and people defending them sends a warning signal that the larger community doesn’t take such issues seriously, and it’s a bigger problem than just a one creep.
Sorry but what? You are just listing some of your opinions about FSF. Can someone explain what concrete way FSF is preventing women and minorities from participating in Free Software that can’t just be attributed to the general abysmal representation rate of women and minorities in tech in general?
Azure runs Linux on Hyper-V, so on top of Windows!
I was surprised when I saw that (in VM boot logs) but I guess if there’s a single company where that might make sense it’s Microsoft.
Aside from questions of RMS’s influence, there’s a clear technical reason to pay attention to the governance of the FSF: thousands of projects give them the right to relicense anything that “GPLv2-or-later” or “GPLv3-or-later”.
Incidentally, I think for this reason, it’s the wrong strategic move to simply abandon the FSF. While it’s not the end-all-be-all, the ability to define a putative GPLv4 may come in handy some day, and it would be bad if that power fell into the wrong hands (even worse hands than Stallman’s).
In my opinion, the “or-later” licenses are foolish anyway*. You’re licensing your work under a license that could become literally anything in the future. And as we have seen time and time again, organizations can be captured and even entire cultural movements start working against their original agenda. Say against Stallman what you will, he was always steadfast in his dedication to actual user freedom, like a rock in the surf.
* Yes, I am aware that Linux is stuck with GPLv2.
What’s the problem with that? Say for example apple. They took FreeBSD because they could do just that while they could not under GPL. Personally I don’t care for apple and don’t use their products, but what exactly is the problem? They seem to be rather popular even amongst many free software authors. It it so bad that they did their thing?
I think the whole idea of forcing it to be free has more bizarreness to it. I don’t want to be exercising control of stuff I wrote if some company takes it and makes closed source changes for whatever purpose. I shared it. From that point on, it’s not mine anymore, as per definition of sharing.
Sure, and reasonably, protection against usurpation of intelectual property is something I would care. If I write something of value, I would want a company to claim they wrote it themselves. But using it and modifying it… Well I released it, shared it.
It’s a fair question. For the record, I am personally very close to coming to this same conclusion: that the FSF has lost so much credibility it’s probably irredeemable at this point, both for their refusal to condemn RMS’s behavior and for their myopic insistence that license is the thing that matters above all else when it comes to user freedom, which has led to situations like Google Chromium that technically qualifies as free software but has been a tremendous force towards consolidating monopoly power and eroding end-user freedom. All this while condemning projects like Debian just for shipping working wifi drivers.
I think the reason that a lot of people are hesitant to move on is that it feels like admitting defeat and saying that “open source” has won, and that the point of what we do is to make software that’s “more effective” (for whoever controls the software) rather than actually working towards a world that’s better for end users. As far as I’m aware there does not exist any other organized form of resistance. (with the possible exception of the FSFe which does condemn Stallman and just general has much more sensible priorities)
But I think you might be right in that the energy could be better spent building up some kind of post-FSF movement with an explicitly anti-capitalist foundation the likes of which the FSF was never bold enough to claim. A lot has happened since the 1980s, and the free-software-vs-open-source divide has always been sooooo subtle that it’s easy for naive programmers to think they’re the same thing.
On the other hand, I am not putting my own energy towards building such a movement, so for me to criticize what other people choose to put their energy into feels a bit hypocritical.
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Who knows what the non-free wifi drivers are actually doing, though?
Personally, I prefer having working wifi over no wifi, but excluding non-free software is also a valid stance.
FWIW the non-free element of wifi drivers that FSF does not approve of is user-uploadable firmware. If the firmware would be stored locally on the wireless adapter and be inaccessible to the end user, the wifi driver would be free from FSF’s standpoint. Same if the functionality would be implemented in hardware. In all cases the question what the card is actually doing would apply in equal measure.
When you get to the low level stuff, the distinction between hardware and software becomes really blurry.
For those of us a bit older, it certainly felt like RMS’s views - and efforts to disseminate them - on free software were pretty important in kick-starting the open-source explosion in the late 90s. Obviously “open source” software has existed since the beginning of time, and was particularly prevalent in certain communities, particularly the original Unix world that sees its continuation in the modern BSD eco-system. However in the 80s and 90s the software that ordinary people were likely to encounter, as the use of and exposure to computing exploded, was all closed-source and commercial - mostly the DOS/Windows ecosystem. RMS’s free software advocacy along with Linux’s use of the GPL was a strong counterpoint to that, and the FSF/GNU project did contribute the libc and dev tools that turned Linux into a usable operating system.
Obviously, none of this forgives the way RMS appears to have behaved or the views he has stated (I’ve not delved very deeply into the accusations because of the ‘ick’ factor, but that certainly doesn’t mean I disbelieve them.) But perhaps it explains a bit why the subject feels important to those of us 40+ years old whereas it may well seem like an irrelevance, albeit a very grim one, to anyone younger.
Technically we are very nearly in a post-FSF/GNU world - we have musl, clang/llvm, many new dev tools, editors, and whole languages and ecosystems. A younger acquaintance on IRC wrote this evening, “.. and to be honest I think given that the FSF seems to be largely a cult of personality around RMS, it’s time to let it die” .. and while my initial reaction was to bristle a bit, I can’t help thinking he’s right. Such a shame its legacy is going to be tainted by one man and his enablers :(
Just wow. This bald statement is a testament to the past success of the FSF, that someone in their 30s can take the current success of free software for granted. (Not to imply that they did it all single-handedly, but you cannot deny the role that they played.)
The current success of Libre Software may stem from the (undeniable) work the FSF did, but it is no longer driven by the FSF. I acknowledge that the FSF did extremely important things from its founding until circa the early 2000s, but since then it has been a sad downhill decline towards irrelevance. Since #MeToo and what came out about RMS and his friends around then, it has also been a decline into active harm to the Libre Software community.
We have the SFC to advocate for software freedom. RYF has been incredibly infuriating for those of us who want to see the Libre Hardware movement flourish; it took two years to certify the Talos II board, and by the time it was certified it had lost most of its market relevance. They are putting resources into a campaign to get non-technical users to use GnuPG for their email without fixing any of its user experience issues - and they don’t even recommend cycling keys regularly, only suggesting to do it in the event of compromise. Taking the cake is their insistence on confusingly calling Thunderbird “Icedove” as a primary name and suggesting Thunderbird is somehow an alternative name.
I appreciate the FSF’s steadfast dedication to purity, but as Python famously encodes into
this, practicality beats purity. I stand against FSF’s requirement that libre operating systems necessarily must not allow users the option to install firmware as it prevents users from learning about the benefits of Libre Software without sacrificing Wi-Fi and in many cases graphics acceleration. I don’t think it’s right that the hardware requires firmware, but this is the world we live in, and if Bash can run on the Mac OS and the LGPL can exist, then users should have a freedom to use the hardware they are stuck with. This is why Adélie’s installer asks the user to make the choice themselves.Or, to make the counterpoint seen elsewhere in this thread, I can boot my Linux kernel system into a BSD-2-Clause OpenRC built against MIT musl libc and log in to my account to start using my Zsh shell session using either toybox or chimerautils for the POSIX command set, all built with NCSA/Apache-2.0 LLVM and Clang. The GNU Operating System plays no part in it.
And to be clear, I disagree with exactly none of your points. Nonetheless, I am old enough to remember when the goals of the FSF seemed utopian, to the point of being unmoored from reality. Somewhere along the line the world surpassed what they set out to do. (Perhaps they were unready for that.)
There were also a strong culture for sharing software, both free and unfree, on BBS-es, on copyparties, in the demoscene, in person and then on the internet, completely independent of the FSF. I feel that you might be giving them a bit too much credit. The culture for sharing code was already there.
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Someone has to file amicus curiae briefs in the Federal appeals circuit courts and SCOTUS. The FSF (and others, like OSI) do that for cases related to software copyright. My understanding is that the FSF and related organizations are to FOSS what the ACLU and SPLC are to civil rights.
This goes beyond code, where you need humans to show up and argue with each other in person or in writing what words mean or how they should be interpreted. But ironically, that’s not the kind of belligerently ignorant trolling highlighted in this report.
I’m not going to claim to know much about it, but Software Freedom Law Center also exists and does this sort of work. As well as Conservancy.
This seems like something that could be verified empirically. Has anyone gathered data on how many briefs have come from each organization? I always think of the EFF when it comes to copyright cases. The FSF doesn’t even come to mind unless it’s specifically about the GPL.
When was the last time FSF actually did this?
There is this saying:
I feel your POV is from the “good times” stage.
I mean, why do we even need some ancient FSF if we have a good open source ecosystem, and we’re generally in good times to be a software developer?
Well, FSF is from the previous stage when they did not have that. And it’s because of the FSF, that stage can be called “previous”.
Like it or not, you’re benefitting greatly from what Stallman did.
That’s just an aphorism, it’s not some kind of objective statement of truth. It’s a self-fulfilling aphorism, you just need confirmation bias to apply it to the current era.
I didn’t include a rationalization for the aphorism; instead, I’ve used it to make a point. In other words, it’s not about the aphorism itself, but about the tendency to forget that times change. For example, if the entire population were to get vaccinated, future generations might doubt the necessity of vaccines because there would be no pathogens for the vaccines to combat (assuming vaccines work as inteded).
For better or worse FSF hosts some resources, technical and social, in use by the GNU project. And the latter has projects that are very important to keep going.
In my mind, the clearest case for the FSF is the definition of free software as a liberty, defined by the four freedoms (and by extension the freedom to help someone non-technical, by for example fixing a bug in some software upstream has abandoned).
As well as the argument that extends from it in favour of democracy; Free voting software, Free policing software, Free medical software, Free research and educational software and so on.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#fs-definition
I don’t think I’ve ever cared bout the FSF. So I think that’s a fine way to move forward.
I am glad that this question is top voted and I applaud its neutral tone.
Disclamer: I’ve been an open source user for a quarter of a century and still run Linux on all my computers.
I like free software because it allows me to trust it more. The whole process allows for more transparency and even for people to fork the code and modify it. It feels safer and it lenda itself for software that is more focus on usefulness rather than all sorts of gimmicks to achieve marketing goals. Although there is a fair share of such gimmicks in the free software world too.
I would not only agree with your skepticism, I will also state that I personally already had a similar opinion to yours back in the mid 2000s. There was already a relic feeling to it and it already smelled of gatekeeping and silly void elitism.
So back in the day I red about the famous GPL licenses and why they were important (which they were) but then headed up to the web and it was all about “should this or that project be included in the gnu project?” Taken as a political matter. gatekeeping. Should we allow this guy to play with the cool kids? Do we let him speak in the mailing lists or do we moderate him to complete silence?
It always ringed wrong to me. It’s not so much about whatever policy they follow, but rather positioning themselves as some sorts of oficial leaders of free software, when the whole point should be allegedly that we don’t need to be subjected to such authority.
IIRC, netcat’s man page does take a jab at the whole thing saying free software licenses are non sense.
Personally it annoys me when I hack together a quick script and share it … it always comes some party pooper with some boring blab about which license I should release it under.
The FSF and RMS did play a central rolle in free software, which Stalman defining much of what it is. But we should leave it at that. At this point, things like GitHub, package registries, etc. are arguably of comparable if not even greater importance.
I do find this pattern in many free software projects that get popular and large. Often times some power hungry self-important group of people decides they should run the thing officially and start creating all this power structure, while hackers are under the impression that it was just a bunch of people hacking.
It baffles me how inclined people can be to defend an authoritative figure who consistently behaves in obnoxious ways. As if acknowledging the person they revere for technical contributions could be wicked in some way at the same time hurts their egos too much.
Stallman clearly has some kind of a disorder. If he was yet another sexual harasser or paedophile, I guess he wouldn’t be as open about it. He seems to genuinely believe in what he has been consistently repeating for decades, and with the massive feedback about his stances he received over the years there are only two possible answers:
That’s the thing I find the most obnoxious: people - and particularly people in the open source world - should be more than ready to tear down their idols if necessary. It’s only healthier for the rest of the community and movement. Defending what is clearly bad behavior from a leader in the community taints the community as a whole. And I can’t think of anything worse to defend than pedophilia and the ownership/distribution of CSAM.
One can appreciate Stallman’s huge contribution to open source - and the world in general, considering how much technological advance was made possible by his contributions - without having to paper over this.
Why would it be a bad thing to be against criminalizing possession of any digital material regardless of its nature?
I consider my encrypted personal computers extensions of my mind. I would very much object to anybody wading through them for any reason.
Eventually people are going to have such devices implanted. Would you consent to surveillance of your auxiliary secondary brain? Would you respect that some people would not consent?
Existence of CSAM is widely abused to implement censorship and snooping. Polemizing with the notion that merely possessing material classified as CSAM is bad in itself is a pretty good idea if you do not want the snooping imposed on people.
Did you know that currently a lot of hentai manga classifies as CSAM? Despite it being a drawn fantasy?
Did you know that underage people often sext? Either with their current partners or to hook up.
These points are all adequately addressed in the article, if you care to read it.
Sorry, but they are not. They are partially acknowledged and then dimissed as irrelevant “because some people suffer”.
I believe it’s legitimate to take the stance that it’s better to allow some amount of crime in order to preserve more freedom. Mass snooping is not acceptable tradeoff for me. Especially when the definition of the illegal material is nonsensically broad.
Making synthetic material explicitly legal to hold and making it possible to report distribution of CSAM material to authorities would probably work much better than complete ban. But that’s less business for organizations that make money off detecting CSAM.
This discussion is practically not even acknowledged. Authors imply that RMS is all for distribution of CSAM where he writes basically “dude, you should avoid material with actual kids and probably don’t tell anyone or they’ll lynch you” which is totally in line with what most liberals would tell their acquaintances to do when asked like that in private.
And last but not least, I’ll add some light whataboutism… How come we care about mental health of abuse victims here but then force them to bear rapist kids? How came we don’t care about millions of kids with disorders caused by Instagram enough to take a meaningful action? How came we don’t care about poor families where women (and kids) have to stay with abusive men they depend on financially due to paygap and similar factors?
What makes this particular issue so important that we are ready to abandom freedom of our communications and sovereignty over our systems?
You create a non-profit organization A-foundation which is concerned with advocating for A. The head of A-foundation decides to also advocate for B. Now out of the people who support A, you have divided them into two groups, the group A+B and the group A-B. The group A-B is now not going to support A-foundation. Wouldn’t it be better for A if A-foundation chose leaders who publicly advocate only for A, without taking a public position on controversial issues B, C, D, etc?
The thing is, if you argue against mass surveillance by undermining the notion that child abuse is bad, and questioning whether CSAM should really be illegal - you’ve already lost the case.
Plus, you’re inviting shady characters, criminals and sex offenders to side with you, which I wouldn’t personally want to happen. It’s not the kind of allies I would like to have, especially when righteously advocating for principal, basic freedoms and not being subject to surveillance.
Point is, as a moderately liberal / libertarian myself, I think we should rather actively seek ways to protect vulnerable individuals from abuse (such as rape, molesting and non-sexual violence) with as minimal impact on personal freedoms as possible. It’s definitely better to to incriminate and charge those responsible for creation and distribution of disturbing content such as CSAM, than to put everyone under surveillance to make sure nobody holds any copies.
That being said, if you get caught with such materials it should trigger investigation, since if you came into possession of such materials you must have been somehow involved - if not as a creator or distributor, then as an individual in the know. And most likely someone did get hurt in the process.
And from my libertarian view, nobody is free to hurt others against their will just because they could argue it’s their freedom. Your freedom ends where others freedoms and rights begin. You cannot deter intruders with nuclear warheads, and likewise freedom of speech should not protect rapists, human traffickers or child abusers.
Personally, I feel the consequences of the solutions greatly outweigh the benefits. Governments cannot be trusted with respecting the privacy of the general population or making nuanced decisions like differentiating between two teenagers sharing photos and things that are absolutely wrong on every moral and ethical level.
On a related note…
There are many stories that socially not considered harmful but also objectively violate the “18+ only” rule that is applied like a shotgun to a nail all over the internet. That rule does not reflect cultural norms and as an author, I deeply disagree with the scope of censorship this has and continues to cause.
That said, my opinion isn’t the only one. I admit I may be on the wrong side of the line here. It’s not out of ignorance. I have seen both sides of this issue. I’ve had to enforce this rule and I know far more about cptsd than I want to.
It’s often important for authoritative figures to behave in obnoxious ways, because the mass of people judging what is obnoxious are either wrong, or are applying their standards inconsistently because they don’t like what that figure is doing. I think that is exactly what is happening to Stallman.
It matters if one set of obnoxious behaviors works against the goals supported by other sets of obnoxious behaviors. “Actually, it’s GNU/Linux” is not the same as toenail mukbang.
While I strongly support this report and shared it on other networks, I flagged it as off-topic as it doesn’t relate to “computing”. It already sparked more bad faith than what I was expecting to see from this community.
Discussion of FSF’s governance is absolutely on-topic for this forum, IMO.
Ultimately, I think the whole report is less about condemning one man (which the report explicitly does) and more about the FSF moving past its problematic leadership and hopefully becoming relevant again.
That’s a fair point. I just don’t think we’ll be able to move past Stallman apologists and have an honest discussion about the FSF, even if we remove the person tag and try to recenter the debate.
So many analogues to the FSF have been founded specifically to enable ignoring RMS, and thriving for that reason, that I don’t think the relevance of the FSF-per-se is even that important any more.
It theoretically could be but clearly isn’t in this specific case.
This isn’t really about FSF’s governance though, it’s about the behaviour of someone governing FSF. Would Hans Reiser’s murdering of his wife be on topic at the time he was project lead on ReiserFS?
Why would Reiser’s wife’s murder not be? It sure seems like something the community should know about.
“something the community should know about” is not Lobsters’s definition of “on topic”:
The Reiser case seems to me to be a “no” on all three questions, although I acknowledge that alone doesn’t necessarily mean it was off-topic.
I disagree on at least 2 here: Knowing that the core maintainer of a major filesystem is in jail with a chance to stay there for decades is useful info when picking the FS for my next project and it certainly had repercussions 10 years later (reiserFS isn’t relevant anymore). Of course a lot of things happened in addition to that, but the stability of its leadership was certainly an issue in its decline.
I would agree that following Reisers court case would not be on subject here, but I would find the fact that there’s something going on around Reiser while he was still in that leadership position - I’d see this definitely in scope for me as a software developer, as long as the source is reputable and factual.
I don’t have a stake in this forum, but such discussions should absolutely be off-topic for a technical forum, especially if it involves cancelling people based on politics. This is mostly because the material is triggering, regardless of your opinions about it, and I don’t see a way to filter such crap out.
Furthermore, as an opinion, I couldn’t care less about the FSF. This is an organization that teaches people that proprietary software is immoral. I mean, this is basically the reason for why Open Source happened because, despite all the good that RMS and the FSF did in jump-starting an ecosystem around GPL licensing, the FSF was and will always be a political cult, all the discussions it generates are political, and I have better things to do.
everything is political, and if you think otherwise, you’re a bloody fool.
Well, it also looks like brigading.
It is important work, but I think I’d rather not read about this here.
In what sense?
I don’t know what sense exactly oz meant, but here’s what the About page says:
I guess the definition of “brigading” there is “to whip up an outrage mob and direct them at targets”.
I also flagged it. I don’t come to lobsters for this kind of drama. Leave it to the orange site.
Respectfully, calling it “drama” downplays decades of clearly documented abuse by the person in question to a rather sickening degree
Which is why it probably has no place on Lobsters. It is drama in our community (at least judging by the Pareto distribution of upvotes vs. flags for this post). You’ll be more likely to find people that won’t downplay this report if you go to Reddit/Twitter/etc.
Off-topic or not, I find it too significant to flag it even if it is not strictly about computing.
It refers to a person who has profound impact on the shape of the worldwide software community.
It documents thoroughly, with countless references to sources, that is Stallman’s statements and manifests in his own site - a concern far too significant to be overlooked, flagged and deleted, even if for many it’s off-topic as in well, paedophilia and sexual harassment are not relevant for me.
Flagging does more than hide it from your feed. It marks the account. If you get enough flags you get a nice message suggesting you delete your account (not a joke).
I think “off topic” should be used sparingly. It is not an “I disagree with this” button or a downvote substitute.
This appears to be more nuanced than what you describe. For reference: app/views/users/standing.html.erb.
That’s the one. It is more nuanced. I was going from memory.
Even though it’s couched, the phrase “delete your account” was quite memorable for me. It’s also a little different experience when it shows up as a banner on the page rather than reading an ERB partial on mobile.
This was discussed extensively 3 years ago: https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg
While I think the original banner was in place to “gently” remind trolls that their antics were not welcome, it had the unfortunate effect of also being applied to prolific posters who attracted an unproportionate amount of flags.
I think I’m the top / second most flagged poster on here every once in a while and it’s honestly ridiculous. I’ve reached out to the mods twice about it with no response, so the whole “delete your post or contact the mods to discuss” is seemingly not a meaningful choice.
Can’t blame burntsushi for it a bit. I’ve considered deleting my account over it since it literally suggests that you consider just that. At this point I’ve moved past it and don’t really care about the banner at all.
Unfortunately, lobsters has the same problem that every site with a scoring system has. People downvote or flag or whatever because they disagree with you, not because you lack substance. No amount of good faith engagement will ever keep people from flagging you, and there is seemingly no recourse for flagging erroneously.
Computing is (still) made by humans. Denying that is not productive nor is it beneficial.
How does any software license fit that topic then as well? Computing is about the people as much as it’s about the computers and computing.
you “strongly support” it, but you took action to reduce its reach and visibility. Your actions are at odds with your claim.
It seems to me possible to strongly support a thing and yet more strongly support principles that one sees as saying it doesn’t belong here. (I am not commenting on whether it does belong here.)
I don’t even think it has to be “more strongly support” re: principles. It’s seems entirely consistent to say “this is the most important issue in my life” while also saying “and I will discuss it in the venues where it is appropriate to do so”, even if you consider discussion in appropriate venues to be of lesser importance. One dictates the value of the conversation, one is simply a practical acceptance of where that issue is best discussed.
I don’t think this gotcha! argument really applies here. I thought to be important to show that off-topic flags are not (all?) in support of Stallman because that’s not what they are for. In addition, the discussion immediately derailed with insults against the report’s authors and trolling—the report on itself is not controversial, but Stallman supporters are trying to make it look like so.
Compare it with the situation on the orange site, where this submission is much more topical: it was flagged to death and never reached the home page. That’s not what happens with off-topic flags on lobste.rs and the link is still #1.
Not every alert needs to go out on every channel. It is worth defending the existence of topical distinctions between different discussion spaces.
All I’m going to say about this is: I’ve known for years, tried to warn people about it, and nothing ever happens. Same as the C++ ISO group. I really wish we had better leaders at the top of software engineering, but especially at the top of the Libre Software movement.
What is going on in the ISO C++ group? First time I hear something like this.
Not going into a sub thread here, but there is/used to be a registered sex offender in the C++ ISO committee. You can find a lot about that by quick googling.
https://patricia.no/2022/03/08/cppcon.html
Standing on stage with a 13 year old girl, doing his “St. IGNUcius” routine, Stallman says “she’s still a virgin for now [places hand on her shoulder, leering], but I hope to do something about that one of these days”. Eww.
I mean, say what you will about free speech and witch hunts etc., but how on earth can the FSF want to be represented by someone who publicly does this kind of thing?
What does it say about them?
If the spokesman of Acme corp – while in the middle of the yearly press conference – were to lower his trousers and take a massive dump on the middle of the stage, you may object that “this rationally doesn’t say something about Acme corp” or “it is the individual who shat, not the institution”. You may be, in a theoretical world where persons are perfectly rational agents, and cows isotropic spherical friction-less objects right. You may however quickly find out that in our actual world, the disgust that this hypothetical spokesman’s behavior would have inspired to the audience would have influenced the audience’s opinion of Acme corp. This spokesman would be quickly out of job, because it is pretty obvious that Acme corp doesn’t want to be associated with the image of the aforementioned scene.
Seeing a seventy something years old man shit-eating grinly put his hand on a thirteen year old girl while implying that he would like to have sex with her does elicit in me and several others a similar response as the one the Acme corp audience would have, a response which we would hope the FSF would like not to be associated with. Regardless of whether the joke is not understood well and RMS is actually playing humor 4D chess by taking a stab at the catholic church debacle with CSA (which I have understood to be his position), the job of a spokesperson is to represent their institution. It is at least a job (and hence to be carried out with professionalism and competence) if not in the case of the FSF an honor. Being the spokesman of the FSF and making pedophilia jokes in a professional setting is at least incompetence.
So to answer your very question. The FSF keeping RMS as their public representative at least says that the FSF has long lost the plot as to how to properly communicate to the general public. A less favorable interpretation would be that the FSF is entirely enfeoffed to RMS who is showing blatant signs of poor judgment and unfitness for a political role, and thus that the FSF itself is unfit to feel this role.
@pushcx public question to the mods:
What is the intended purpose of leaving this up for “discussion”, given that currently 94/207 (a hair over 45%) of community votes are “this does not belong here”?
Once upon a time we were “not the internet torch and pitchfork store”. To what degree is or is not that still the case?
Watching this thread today, I’ve thought a lot about a comment about why a similar story should stay up. I didn’t remember your reply until seeing it again. I think our opinions are probably in the about the same place, so I’m going to write with an eye towards turning that disagreement into clearer policy.
Your stat of the number of flags is a good point; this is currently the most-flagged story on the site. 60 users have hidden the story, which is also up at the top with a couple rants and some satire. I’m still very wary of a heckler’s veto on hard topics, especially when it would benefit the people with power over organizations. Despite the flags the discussion has been substantive.
I didn’t quite take this as brigading but it’s the kind of unclear call I wrote about in the guidelines. The bottom third of this post is about how the FSF/GNU have handled these events. It advocates specific steps to reform the org. It doesn’t attempt to harass individuals into silence, though it gets real close when it says “raise our voices in condemnation of sexual violence and those who protect perpetrators of it”.
A little while ago I made the opposite call when I removed a post for brigading because it was about a business deal and ended with a call-to-action that techies should scream about it. The two differences between the stories are authorship and desired outcome. This one is a group (supposedly) trying to improve an ideologically aligned org; the other was a wronged customer. This one advocates speaking and the other screaming. There’s not a lot of daylight between the two. The difference between activism and brigading seems to come down to perceived intent and likelihood of causing harm by harassment. Some of that likelihood is informed the the US law around public figures.
On that topic of harassment, I’m especially unsympathetic to these authors’ use of anonymity. They’re not involuntary public figures like some of Appelbaum’s victims trying to reveal unknown abuse related to his position; they’ve just decided it’s convenient to hide their identities while publicly relitigating someone’s character.
Thank you for your reply.
The guidelines, for reference, that I think are relevant here:
For topicality, how is any of this going to:
This submission clearly fails the first two points, and may or may not be of historical interest on the third.
For brigading, again, I’ll cite chapter and verse:
There is plenty of arguing from righteousness in this thread right now. There is clear direction of target here-Stallman–and a clear attempt to alter the behavior of the FSF.
This submission fails, plainly, the criteria for being here, and it’s clearly annoyed half the people that bothered to vote on it.
I appreciate your concern about “heckler’s veto”, but these heckles are all in favor of maintaining law and order, such as it is, on this site using what passes for case law and established guidelines.
There’s a broader problem, and that is that you cannot flirt with activism here and pretend brigading here won’t happen. The point I made in our linked discussion remains: these people do not care about the Lobsters ecosystem and community more than they care about whatever axe they have to grind. They will drop–further–the quality of discourse on this site in their pursuit of smearing people they don’t like, mobilizing others against those people, and signalling to each other that they’re on the right side of history.
We’ve seen Lobsters used for social amplification attacks, for example with the Save Nix Together and related Nix drama and the Appelbaum business you linked (speaking of, did anything in that thread do anything in the near 8 years since that went down, or was it just impotent nerd screeching?). It only hurts the community.
You need to decide if you’re going to be a useful idiot for these people (in this case, judging by headers and registrar information, 90% likely Drew DeVault) or if you’re going to enforce the rules of the site. I don’t particularly care which you do–honestly a
metareferendum to establish site norms around acceptable brigading for the blessed riff-raff and belief systems would solve for both elegantly–but I suggest that for the future health of this place you make a decision and remove the ambiguity.(I’m not going to bother arguing the particulars of this case because life is too short to spend it defending every screwy belief RMS has and because it’s incredibly off-topic and the discussion trite and tiresome with the lobsters we have.)
I was thinking about this for a good while tonight.
It improves the reader’s next program by not assigning copyright to FSF until and unless they become more toxic. It improves the reader’s next program by thinking “maybe I should write this in portable shell instead of relying on GNU Bash”. Unfortunately, RMS’ opinions have hurt both the GCC project and the glibc project (and addendum, which took another year to finally resolve) in the recent past. Things like this should make everyone seriously reconsider donating their program to the GNU Project, so far as anyone does consider that any more.
I was pondering that as well. In addition to what you mentioned, it might motivate those who want to use one of the FSF’s copyleft licenses to license their work under a specific version rather than “vX or later” if they don’t feel that FSF leadership is steering things in the right direction.
I’ve always been inclined to specify my version of the license on those occasions when I do choose copyleft, and it’s certainly strengthened my resolve in that regard.
Honestly my primary critique of the FSF is that they are not setting themselves up for a world where rms has passed away. The governance etc has bent to be his personal vehicle, which is bad governance. Following that, it also isn’t addressing modern computing trends, but older trends. Anyway.
I don’t like this blog post. It’s nasty without need. Its calling for party line behavior and is hunting for “wrongthink”, looking to cancel anyone who doesn’t dance to their tune. And it’s anon - at the least, the editors should not be anon.
rms isn’t going to change his mind. He’s spent a lifetime being weird and stubborn. So what are the editors really gunning for? That’s the question that should be looked at.
I’d judge they are probably trying to exile the FSF and its associated software, licenses from the domain of acceptable system components, and tar any supporter as being Wrongthinky.
What’s the nastiness without need? They point out that RMS has been credibly accused of sexual harassment and is on record as being in favor of moving the balance of sexual offenses away from protection of the vulnerable and towards the sexual gratification of those who do things that are currently considered criminal. If you think that’s nastiness, then it’s entirely on RMS part.
Given that all the discussion in this thread is either criticizing RMS for the positions and behavior listed or attempting to defend him by calling this stuff unwarranted or a non-issue I think it’s self evident that RMS’s opinions are controversial enough to distract from the stated mission of the FSF. At minimum he should pick between his causes because he can’t effectively be a figurehead for the FSF while also advocating what can most neutrally be described as highly controversial opinions.
I don’t find this report particularly convincing - because it conflicts several different themes, and is intentionally confusing on a few particular facts, for example:
Claiming sexual minimum age should be 16 is a lot less divisive than claiming it should be 12! Parts of the US and large parts of Europe has the age of sexual consent at 16.
The report states:
Which they don’t really do to the extent that they claim?
Parts of the report argues that a private citizen should not publish questionable opinions (I don’t see a reference to hate speech) at all.
Partly it tries to argue voicing such opinions isn’t compatible with being a public figure (this might be true).
Part of the report appears to claim that one simply should not discuss the age of consent.
I don’t doubt some of RMS’ writings are hurtful - and there might be an argument for removing him from certain roles - but this long litany of mixed quotes isn’t that argument in my opinion.
It’s a shame, because if his statements and actions have helped foster misogynistic attitudes in the various spaces for Free software - then that does warrant discussion and action. But with how the selected quotes are framed, it’s hard to read this as anything other than a personal attack.
I want to point out that in places where sex work is legal and the regular age of consent is below 18, it’s still usually the case that sex work has a higher age bar. In general, it’s common for any situation where the older party is in a position of power over the younger party to have a higher minimum age of consent.
Have you really not thought about how free a 16 year old is to choose to engage in sex work or not? Or do you not care?
[Comment removed by author]
This is not worthy of Lobste.rs. Some of the arguments made in there are ludicrous.
Like?
Reading just the introduction, I find it weird to put ‘Distinction between “children” and other minors’ alongside more problematic (perhaps even criminal?) behaviour.
As a matter of fact, there’s a continuum between childhood and adulthood, and not everybody grow up at the same rate. And I think it is obvious to anyone that most 15 year old are neither children nor adults. As a matter of law we do need some cut-off point, and most countries have several: differing levels of responsibility, from none when you’re an infant, to full when you attain your political majority. And even then there’s some variability: if I recall correctly in many US states you can drive at 16 but drink only at 21.
And then there’s the age of consent. Depending on country that ain’t always 18. In France for instance that’s more like 16, with caveats: if the older party has a kind of authority over the younger party (professor, cop, celebrity…) they might still get prosecuted.
Even in normal relationships between teens it makes a whole lot of sense to allow a legal adult and an underage to have sex. If the rule was “both must be over 18 or both must be under 18”, you’d get in silly situations where a 16yo girl dating a 17yo boy could have all the sex they want, but as soon as the boy turns 18 he could be jailed if they don’t stop until the girl too turn 18. We’d have to have some leeway, in the name of consistency. Or forbid underage sex altogether, but I don’t think this one would go well.
Now there is such a thing as taking it too far. There is a world of difference for instance, between a 13yo girl who barely got past puberty, and a 17yo one who has almost, if not fully, matured. So we’ve got to have a limit, age of consent and all that jazz. And it won’t be perfect for everybody (different people mature at different rates). And I also have no clue where the age of consent should be. I can guess, but I believe such things should be informed by scientific evidence about people’s maturity levels, power dynamics and likely a host of other stuff that’s not even on my radar.
Now there’s some quote by RMS that I find very interesting:
The authors of this report seem to say this was not nearly enough of a retraction. What I find very interesting though is the reason RMS said he changed his mind: harm. Adults should not have sex with children because it harms the child. And I think this is a fairly good north star: people should not harm people. Convince RMS that 13yo/adult sex hurts the 13yo, and he will say adults should not do that. Convince him 17yo/18yo sex hurts the 17yo, he’ll say the 18yo should no do that.
Now that’s just the one thing. If even half of the report correctly argues for genuinely problematic stuff (and I’m inclined to guess it does even though I have yet to read past the introduction), that is still very damning for RMS.
sigh one problem I’ve had with this report is that, as with many activist materials, it’s hard to know if it’s the real deal or an attempt at mob justice. That’s why my other (at the time of writing) two posts in this thread were solely about things other posters brought up when examining it. If it’s mob justice, I’d rather not lend my voice to it.
In a possibly futile attempt to not do that now, either: when reading this, it’s worth remembering that both RMS’ perspective and many of his readers’ are very US-centric, so there’s lots of cultural baggage that’s just not obvious to us across the pond when reading both Stallman’s writings and this report.
For example, his particular choice for when a person starts being a teenager, rather than a child, happens to be the most popular choice among American pedophile apologists, too – something that I wish whoever explained to me could also bleach from my brain, thank you very much.
I don’t mean to say or to imply that Stallman also shares their other opinions (or even this one; posturing for controversy’s sake is a thing), or that he would ever harm a child, or that he has. I simply don’t know any of that, and I am skeptical of anything that comes out of, or is about, large corporations or important non-profits, including this report. I mean to point out that this particular limit, which to you and me likely just sounds like a disturbing opinion attached to an otherwise arbitrary number, carries a more definitive connotation to my American friends who are a bit more familiar with the scum of the Earth.
I suspect the point is not that making a distinction is in and of itself wrong. As you correctly note, there are significant differences between a teen and a 6 year old.
However, I suspect that that what they mean is the use of that real distinction to argue that sexual relations between 13 and 30 year olds are unproblematic is, regardless of stated intent, arguing in favor of exploitation.
I would argue this is a fundamentally reasonable position, described in a way that makes it sound unreasonable. If it turns out the author truly thinks distinguishing teens and young children is unreasonable in any context, that would be ludicrous.
Edit: I also find your penultimate paragraph very odd. While his retraction is better than nothing, an abstract commitment to not harming people is much much less important than the question “are you doing things that harm these people (or arguing that it’s ok to do things that harm them)?” Around the world, you’ll find relatively few people who openly say “our goal is to oppress these people”, it’s more often “it’s for their own good that we rule them.”
You may partially agree with RMS’ campaign but it’s certainly not a ludicrous accusation. He is in fact arguing for a loosening of laws that have only recently reached anything like an adequate level of child protection. His political positions are easily confused with those of the FSF and free software movement.
There’s nothing ludicrous in this report.
Not sure you mean by “accusation” here, I personally take it for granted that RMS makes a rather sharp difference between a child and a teen. The way it’s presented, especially at the beginning, gives the impression that the editors condemn that distinction. Which, you will agree with me here, would be utterly ridiculous: there is a difference between children and teens, and there’s nothing problematic with acknowledging that.
What is problematic though, is taking it as far as RMS does. On the one hand, there is a distinction, and we can wager that while both child rape and teen rape are horrible crimes, child rape is the more horrible of the two: the younger the victim, the worse it gets. On the other hand, RMS seems to view, say, 13yo/adult sex as no big deal, thus ignoring the power and experience imbalance that makes is basically impossible for the teen to give consent — which means rape.
So, while I understand, and mostly agree with, the editor’s main point, this particular argument was poorly formulated and easy to straw-man into something ludicrous if you stop reading too soon.
No, I think you’re apologizing for the sexual exploitation of children by calling them teenagers.
Even now you think that? Very well.
There are two kinds of people in this world, those who are willing to condemn Jeffrey Epstein and what he did, and those who read a small portion of an introduction of a report condemning a man who did not, and write an essay equivocating about that man, who has pretty publicly made it his mission his entire life to try and reduce the age of consent.
It’s hard to interpret your comment charitably. Quite clearly you’re implying those two kinds are mutually exclusive, and quite clearly you are using it to imply stuff about me that’s not only false, but unsubstantiated.
Isn’t this something that should be put to Stallman for response before using it to assassinate his character and the free software movement by association? Or does responsible journalism no longer exist? Like, there’s a difference with him being wrong about sexual activity’s impact on minors under 16 (the average age of consent around the world) versus him being a malicious pedophile intent on defending child sex abuse.
Thankfully you can find this addressed in the report, which also details his various apologies and how he has worked to undermine his own apologies over time. This is not something new coming out of nowhere that Stallman would respond to in a novel way, it is documentation of a very long pattern of behavior.
I feel like responses to Stallman usually don’t come with data, so the arguments and rebuttals and such turn into semantic warfare. This isn’t that sort of thing.
Journalistic ethics vary worldwide. Here in Europe, for example, I’m not aware that the right of reply is generally understood as requiring that the subject of a piece be allowed to see it and respond before publication. This may be different in English-speaking countries where the right of reply might not enjoy the same legal protection as here. In any case, the right of reply generally covers factual statements only (which would be the numerous quotations from Stallman’s blog, transcripts of his public appearances etc.) – in these cases, the editors have noted Stallman’s excuses, partial retractions, etc. where they exist. The rebuttal sections would not be covered by right of reply, since they are commentary and analysis. The factual sections are very well-cited with hyperlinks. There is very little that would be covered by a right of reply.
As for the accusation of a motive to ‘assassinate [the character of?] the free software movement’ – pointing out Stallman’s personal flaws of any kind really should not affect the free software movement in toto. Most of the people I’ve seen posting and sharing this are themselves free software activists. I have good reason to believe that the authors are free software programmers, users, and activists. This is not a psyop by … (I don’t know who the anti-free-software boogeyman is since Microsoft embraced FOSS, but whoever people are blaming for anti-free software propaganda now.) From all I can tell, those who authored and many of those agree with this report want, among other things, a free software movement whose reputation is less unfairly tied to the reputation of one man – a man whose reputation deserves to be called into question when he keeps doing things such as what is described in this report.
They really haven’t. Most (almost all?) Microsoft software is at least partially closed source, and much of it is entirely so.
Also, they supported OpenAI in creating derivative works of all Free Software on GitHub, which I hope will be ruled illegal in the near future.
It’s alarming watching so many hackers align behind Microsoft, since Google revealed their true colours.
Fool me once, etc.
These aren’t new allegations, and this isn’t the first time RMS’s conduct has been reported.
It’s merely a documentation of years of recurring problematic behavior, non-apologies, and FSF looking the other way.
They all had numerous chances to respond and correct these issues, and they didn’t. In 2019 the same reports about the same issues have flared up again, and even resulted in RMS being removed from the board… temporarily.
RMS and FSF have shown time after time that they’re not going to change.
There is no response needed, and even if there was one, there is no reason to believe any of it is genuine, and not yet another feigned concern, insincere apology, superficial change, and back to normal.
I didn’t get that sense, at all, from the document. Rather it contained a fairly simple proposal for the free software movement (in the form of the FSF) to eject Stallman based on his publicly stated opinions.
If there’s any character damage being done, it’ll be by the FSF to themselves, if they fail to act following this publication.
I do not think that “responsible journalism” requires informing subject of an article about its content beforehand. I would say more - in many cases, especially in investigative journalism about public people, it is something that will not be sent for approval/response beforehand.
It’s a little more subtle than that. See, for instance, this article from NPR about what kind of factors are taken into account when deciding how long to wait after a request for comment.
Reaching out for a comment isn’t a legal requirement under many (most?) jurisdictions but it’s usually good practice, especially in investigative journalism. However, it’s something where the journalist is expected to exercise their own judgement. There are some basic rules of thumb for when not to do it, too, like not calling someone for a comment on something they’ve already issued a public position on, or if you’re not publishing new material but just quoting things that are public knowledge by now and, literally, old news.
So why do journalists do it? There’s a lot of reasons, some editorial in nature, sometimes it Legal’s advice, but also, ultimately, just to be on the safe side, because:
When it’s done, it’s always done as a courtesy and in the form of a request for comment, though, there’s no “approval” there. As in, the journalist will call that person or their press representative, say hey, I’m X from Y, we’re going to publish a material that says such and such, would you care to comment on that. Asking for that material not to be published is a very big no-no.
I don’t know if what’s in the linked report warrants a request for comments because I just haven’t followed this thing closely enough in the past few years. I’m only mentioning this (sauce: used to work for a print publication like 20 years ago) because journalistic practices are easy to have opinions on, and maybe a quasi-insider perspective (I was young and never wrote anything of importance, but I worked with people who weren’t and covered real stuff), even if out-of-date, would be useful to someone.
Character assassination is all that comes to mind when i.e. the section on “Credible allegations of sexual misconduct” contains zero sexual activity, not even exposing himself to women which is what I expected to read. He emotionally pressured/bullied/coerced a woman to go on a date with him, disgusting and embarrassing behaviour, obviously wrong - but with nothing sexual, it’s not a great lead to the “sexual misconduct” section.
It would seem your definition of sexual misconduct requires lewd/severe acts, which is false. Sexual misconduct is a fairly wide range of offenses, including but not limited to sexual harassment and sexual coercion.
Attempting to frame it as requiring lewd acts only serves to dilute the voices of people on the receiving end of the harassment.
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Don't insult people by saying they have mental disorders.]
Perhaps I’m reading too much into your comment, but your expectation was that there should be a lewd act for the “sexual misconduct”.
You can split hairs all you want, unwanted advances by people in a position of power even without a mention of sex is still considered sexual harassment by most courts in the US(where the vast majority of the report is about).
Having a teen come on stage and make a joke about virginity isn’t only inappropriate for that person, it is also subjecting every one in the audience to the same treatment.
I agree with you. It’s sexual harassment to put a 13-year-old into a sexual context, regardless of their permission. It also makes everyone in the audience an unwitting accomplice, and he will point to their silence as approval.
We should bear in mind that the majority of the evidence that exists is not going to be available to us. The reports we have paint a picture of someone who attempted to exercise authority to gain a sexual favor in a few situations where they didn’t really have the authority. This suggests there were other times this tactic bore fruit, or he wouldn’t have kept trying.
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Pruning a subthread about an insult; thanks for pointing this out.]
You can’t assassinate someone’s character by correctly pointing out that he has, and continues to, defend pedophilia. All they are doing is expanding the context in which people evaluate the character’s output.
What would you expect to be the likely outcomes of being coerced into a dating someone?
They go on a date, it goes well or more likely doesn’t go well because of the circumstances, and grown adults make decisions. I don’t have the rizz to go back to mine for coffee after every first date, and would be surprised if Stallman did.
To cool off the descendant threads slightly, I would say that many stories of coercive relationships start with this kind of coercion. Whatever power differential someone can exploit to coerce someone into a date, they can also use to coerce other things, and claims from the victim against the aggressor become harder to prosecute because of the entanglement of the relationship. Abusive relationships are legal, in a sense, although the abuse isn’t, there is a coercive context that makes even reporting abuse difficult, let alone prosecuting it.
Back to the article, I wouldn’t assume that just because someone failed to coerce a couple people, they wouldn’t try again with others, especially when the time span is so wide between the two specific claims in the article. I would expect coercion in the beginning to be a prelude to more coercion later. RMS also spends a great deal of energy defending sexual aggression and trying to redefine what constitutes sexual coercion on his website. Taking these positions, while also having attempted to coerce people (even if it’s “just” dates or attempting pick-ups), is not a great combination.
To give an example less specific to this context, in many countries still today, marital rape is not considered a crime—and indeed, until 1993 it wasn’t a crime in all the United States.
I think this is the first time when I have to write something and preface it with a trigger warning. Hopefully I’m doing this right, I’m not entirely sure how this goes.
None of this is specifically about something in this report, this is just about your comment. I’d like to try to explain why you (and some of the people downthread) are getting stronger reactions than you think are warranted. I imagine, or at least I hope, that you think it’s being blown out of proportion simply from a lack of experience – as in hopefully you were never bullied into a date and if you ever went on a date that wasn’t good, it was just boring or something.
“Likely doesn’t go well because of the circumstances” is an euphemism that only covers the kind of awkward but harmless cringe of, say, a friend playing matchmaker and setting you up with someone who turns out to be a devout vegan and your idea of a cool first date begins with dinner at this new burger joint where the star of the menu is something called the Mega Smoked Bacon Four-Pounder And No We Didn’t Mean Quarter.
Being pressured into a date is not that kind of cringe. Especially not when one person is on an entirely different “level” than the other – not necessarily in terms of formal workplace hierarchy, social pressure works like that, too.
Saying “no” isn’t just a matter of whether you like that person or not, it’s also a matter of wondering if that’ll have any consequences over your work/study/circle of friends, and living with that choice for however long it takes. The teacher you’re turning down today, as a freshman, may teach a senior year class. The charismatic person you’re saying no to may not be in charge of your work but if they have management’s year, they might as well be.
You think turning down the date is the end of it but depending on circumstances it may not be, it’s the kind of thing that can have long-lasting consequences with the wrong person. And more generally, bullying someone into a date, even if they eventually stick by their refusal, isn’t fine for the same reason why bullying someone isn’t fine even if you don’t beat them up in the end.
Saying “yes” is even worse: it’s (hopefully just) an evening in which you’re constantly wondering at what point avoiding whatever you’re risking by saying “no” begins to not be worth the pain of saying “yes”, and then realising you’re basically doing risk-benefit analyses and trying to bargain with yourself. And as you do that, you also can’t help but wonder if the person who wouldn’t take no for an answer when they asked you out would take no for an answer when it comes to the rest of the date. What will they do if you don’t hold their hand? What if you won’t kiss them? What if you won’t say yes to another date?
Sometimes, when they’re young (edit: this part is specifically about the report, it’s about something that happened between people in their late teens/mid-twenties), people do this sort of stupid thing just because they don’t understand how hurtful it is – out of ignorance, or loneliness, or whatever, we’re all human. I get that, especially with “unwritten”, social rules; there was no abuse there, but as an awkward, nerdy teenager, I once dated one of the most popular girls in my high school, and I swear to God I didn’t understand anything going on around me, I just didn’t get how cool kids functioned. The entire human society gets that, it’s how we’ve come up with apologies – which can’t undo things, but they can at least re-establish some lost decency.
Also, sure, no amount of space policing will keep you safe from psychopaths, so developing a thick skin for these things is useful. But given the choice, why not be nice, instead of being someone’s villain origin story?
“More likely doesn’t go well” doesn’t even begin to capture how bad these things can be. Depending on circumstances, the rizz may not be what gets the other person back to yours for a coffee. (Edit:) I get that you’re not condoning coercion or sexual harassment; but a) you may not realise it but your comment sounds a lot like the kind of stuff people who do condone that say, so you’re getting flak for it, and b) when someone is coerced into a date, some of the decision-making ability that you think adults have is lost; that’s what makes it so awful.
I’m not sure what the correct flag type is for this comment, but are we really a community that welcomes comments that say that, when men bully women to try to get them to go on dates with them, women should simply acquiesce?
I’m sorry, but you seem to be reading something I didn’t say. I categorically do not believe women should acquiesce to bullying behaviour and I think it’s disgusting that Stallman did so. If you assumed as you say in another comment that I meant everything was fine because this woman went on the date, that’s on you - I didn’t imply that, I don’t think that, it wouldn’t justify the behaviour, and you should try to be more charitable when reading something you disagree with. I appreciate @linkdd reading my comment charitably, instead of making me out to be some insane misogynist monster.
How do you go from:
To:
At the point where I interjected, where the answer to ‘What would you expect to be the likely outcomes of being coerced into a dating someone?’ began with the words ‘They go on a date’.
The outcome of being coerced into dating someone comes after said date. So it feels logical that the answer begins with “They go on a date”. And the author also re-state their disapproval with “doesn’t go well because of the circumstances”.
The implication that everything would be alright (that the coercion/bullying would stop?) once they had been on a date once and the victim had made a ‘decision’ is another dangerously naïve aspect of the comment author’s premise.
Believing things like this is how people end up in long-term abusive relationships.
I may have interpreted the author’s comment differently. What I understood was: “this specific example did not seem to have led to anything worse than the bad thing it already was”
Oh, there I hadn’t thought about Stallman probably for more than a year and that was a really nice way to go through life.
re: the last section, titled “Recommendations for reconciliation and closure” – does anyone know of a cadre of likely, enthusiastic replacements for those members the authors suggest step aside? It seems to me like the report misses an opportunity by encouraging a boycott. Why not press for replacements who are committed to a useful and corrective agenda? I feel like there’s no shortage of regrettable characters waiting to replace the current regrettable characters. Is there someone worth promoting here?
I prefer the call for a boycott there. Not that I’m terribly fond of them (destroying structures also destroys their good parts), but because if the report were to name replacements, it would damage those replacements. For one, it would put people on the spot that don’t want that position (potentially exposing them to years of questions why they didn’t), second, if successful they would also be the replacements that are there because of “that report”.
I think it’s better to ask for boycott then - it is actionable and a threat, but it gives liberty to those that actually want to step up. A boycott is easy to drop, a reputation is hard to repair.
What would a boycott look like? Not use the GPL? Not use GNU software?
Please ask the writers of the reports, not me. I think some effective boycotts can be designed here, but why would I after saying that I’m not fond of them?
Flagged as off-topic.
I don’t see anything new in there and I am not going to wade through it in detail again. Stallmann is consistent and has some points. Some of those, e.g. related to child porn, are relevant to freedom and computers.
He’s also probably an old lecher and should be slapped around. I am fine with calling him on that and having him removed, if people closer to him agree that’s indeed the case.
OTOH, I am pretty sick with the US cancel culture. Mob is not justice. All this attempting to gather as much crap on a person to assisinate them is disgusting.
If this is cancel culture, I wish we had it in the rest of the world, instead of just protecting terrible people!
I would very much prefer functioning proper channels to resolve situations such as these. I don’t believe that going public and trying to gather as much smear on a person to resolve injustice is a scalable long-term solution.
And yes, this is a textbook cancel culture. Pressing his employers to dismiss him couple years back, for example? You are OK with this simply because your are not fond of the particular person, but the method itself is wrong.
Nobody knows what will the moral fashion look like in ten years. You assume it’s going to continue to be liberal socialism that gave us Star Trek. I would very much love if that was the case, but it’s also highly probable that the next thing is not going to be as nice.
I mean there have been cases where Korean companies fired people for being associated with “radical feminism” despite it all being a complete misunderstanding. But those people still had zero recourse against the mob “justice”.
In Czechia, many small people lost everything they had because other enterprising people associated them with bourgeoisie after WW2. Because communism was in the fashion and it was not safe to speak against the implementation details.
Recently there has been a significant backlash against voyeurism awareness campaign in public transport in Czechia. Same with Istanbul treaty. Fico in Slovakia is pretty vocally reactionary, too. Using similar rhetoric Hitler did back in the day. Heck look at what gets said in the US nowadays.
It’s still very much possible for the scales to tip the other way and if they do, what are you going to do?
If there’s no fair handling of the case, no clear rules to follow… Are you willing to fight? Because that’s how you will get your civil war.
So, please, use your excess energy to ask for a clear Code of Conduct with working enforcement and make sure 3/5 majority is on board with it instead of focusing on specific people.
RMS should be removed because he’s a bad, out-of-touch leader. The sexual allegations almost don’t matter.
If this is off-topic, your comments about cancel culture are off-topic.
Timing is probably not accidental.
Publication of this text: 2024-10-14
Review of existing FSF board members: 2024-10-21
Looks like some anonymous group is trying to influence the internal processes of the FSF.
Stallman or not, I flagged this as off-topic because lobste.rs should not help to share this type of content IMO.
Did not know gjs was a board member.
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Thank you for pasting this AI slop.
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Alternative view: https://stallman-report.com
For those wondering, clicking on this link will redirect to https://stallmansupport.org. It plays on the ambiguity between stallman-report.org (the report) and stallman-report.com (the “alternative view”)—quite deceptive behavior.
The text (but not the target) of your link is wrong. Correct one https://stallmansupport.org
This link should really be pinned on top.
What’s the correct flag for “intentional attempt to mislead via URL”? “Spam” feels closest, but it’s not quite right?
plain ol’ ‘troll’
Interestingly, it was published by an anonymous group. So I guess, could be anything, including AI.
When you look at the abuse from the FSF fandom heaped on people who have brought this up in the past it’s not hard to see why they chose this route.
Anonymity does not make cited claims any less real
Do you read anonymous letters?
A lot of professional publications hide identity of their writers. From the top of my head, The Economist, EDGE Magazine, various geopolitical analysis teams, any whistleblower, etc.
Point is, identity of the speaker is often not relevant to the point made.
I think this report is being written anonymously to protect the authors from hatemail, and that’s fine and fits with a long tradition of activist writing.
I think all of the examples that you gave except the whistleblower are more likely to use anonymity for dubious purposes, though. Here are some common bad reasons why publications use anonymity:
There’s a long tradition in anarchist and activist writing of crediting things to “Anonymous” or to a pseudonym (often used by a group). This is usually done to protect the authors writing about their crimes or illegal or unpopular ideas from retaliation; or it is done to emphasise that a text is a collective work; or it is done to encourage readers to read critically rather than trusting appeals to authority. I think all of those reasons fit the Stallman Report.
We’re on a forum right now lol do you think ‘insanitybit’ is my given name? It was an anonymous handle that I used for years before it was ever attached to my person publicly.
I’d say the vast majority of my interactions are with anonymous persons.
I will nitpick and say that most of my online interactions are with pseudonymous persons. That is to say, I don’t know who “insanitybit” is, but I do know/expect that “insanitybit” is the same person each time I interact with them on this forum.
In a non-nitpicky way, I will add that while I think this “Stallman Report” post is off-topic for this forum and I have flagged it as such, it does cite its sources so thoroughly that it should not matter whether or not I know who is writing. The things they’re saying are so thoroughly cited that they’d be trivially falsifiable if not true. It seems weird to use the anonymous nature of the poster as an attack, given that.
Sincerely,
Mr. Hoist B. Petard
That’s true. The names are typically consistent. Agreed all around, really.
Do you get anonymous letters?
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